


Nameless

by madsthenerdygirl



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 08:58:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6368320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsthenerdygirl/pseuds/madsthenerdygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While relaxing at a space station, Malcolm Reynolds receives a piece of mail from the last person he'd ever expect: Saffron. Dying in prison, she begs Mal to deliver an enclosed letter to Durran. The consequences of such an act force everyone on Serenity to reexamine their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted at fanfiction.net in 2012 when I was eighteen. I'm not crossposting it here along with all of my other work. Unlike much of my earlier work, which makes me cringe, I'm rather proud of this piece. It has a special place in my heart. That said... I was rather obsessed with this show. Ah, the follies of youth.

I do not agree with this exercise.

I understand the reasons Simon wants me to do this, and I know that Shepherd Book was only trying to help when he gave Simon the idea, but that does not change facts.

I hate writing.

So there.

Simon says that I used to love composition. He says that I would study languages, and codes, and even make up some of my own. I don't remember. I do remember writing him letters with secret messages. I remember begging him to help.

I do not like writing down my thoughts where people can find them.

People tend to use me.

But Simon promised that this would be kept safe and that no one would read it without my permission except for Jayne. If I use a plethora of expressions that are exceedingly difficult to comprehend, however, he will be incapable of deducing their significance, rendering these terms anodyne.

Don't tell anyone, but I sometimes use complicated terms just to watch their jaws go slack. It's funny to feel their thoughts soften with surprise and then dart around as they search for understanding. Zoe just stares at me, deciphering my meaning. She has seen too much to be startled by a little girl with big words. Simon is used to it, so he just blinks and figures it out. Kaylee and Jayne are funny, because their mouths pop open just a little. Jayne's eyes bug out sometimes, too. Mal's jaw just clenches a little, but Inara is rather nice about it. She just smiles politely until she can think of a way to respond.  _Always remain poised. Never show an emotion your client does not wish to see._

That's her thought, not mine. I sensed it a couple of times. She learned it while training at the temple.

Wash is smart. He thinks of a retort to give back to me when he doesn't understand. That kept him alive.  _Make 'em laugh._

That's his thought. It's a fragment, a part of a larger thought, but I wasn't really paying attention so I didn't get all of it. Just that one loud piece.

People think very loudly. It's not polite.

Do most people write about the weather in their journals? People are rather obsessed with weather. It is the ideal icebreaker or conversation starter at parties. At least, that's what I remember from the parties I went to. That was back at the Core.

That was long ago.

If so, this will be very boring. The weather here is always the same. Black. Stars, of course, but we never get close to them. The black is very pretty. There are many analogies you can give to describe the stars, and the dark space.

Diamonds scattered on black velvet.

Pearls on the bottom of a deep ocean.

_Holes into Heaven, so that the angels can watch us._

That's not mine. That's from church back home.

Fireflies, dancing in the night sky…

We're on a Firefly.

We dance in the sky.

Simon is calling me. It's dinnertime. I don't want to eat, but I think I'll have a few bites today. It makes him happy when I eat, and I very much want Simon to be happy.

Kaylee could make him happy.

Simon is calling again.

* * *

Here is how dinner went:

"River, please eat three more bites. Just three, okay?"

"Here, we'll make it a game!" Kaylee loves games. She loves playing games with me. I'm glad. "We'll be pigs and stuff our faces, and I bet I can eat it all before you!"

I like Kaylee.

Simon is confused. "Wait--what?" He doesn't understand that it's fun to be silly. Kaylee likes it. I like it. It makes me feel safe, like I'm back at home.

"One, two, three!"

Kaylee and I dig into the food, no forks or anything, just plopping our faces into it and tearing it all off with our mouths. Halfway through we start laughing, and we nearly choke. There is food all over Kaylee's face and some bits in her hair.

_She looks adorable._

Simon. He really must learn to keep his thoughts about her quieter. I can hear them from the other side of the ship sometimes.

You don't want to know about the times he dreams about her. He's my brother. It's a little sick.

"Wash, I checked the logs and we should be landin' in…" Mal pauses, because he's seen Kaylee and me. "What in the gorram…?"

"We're pigs, Cap'n!" Kaylee announces.

Mal is deciding whether he should make a joke or just leave the room. He knows that neither will work, though. Sometimes I think Mal is smarter than all of us. But then I look at Inara and I think he's kind of dumb. Mal chooses to sit down at the end of the table.

Inara suddenly looks up, straight ahead at the wall. Inara is leaving.

_I have to get out. Companions cannot have attachments._

Inara is so lonely. All companions are lonely.

Nandi wasn't lonely. She made a family. Inara's made a family. It scares her. Sometimes her fear is so strong that I can almost smell it.

Sometimes I hate knowing what people are thinking. Sometimes I wish that I could do something about it, like throwing my arms around Inara and hugging her tight and telling her she's safe. It's what Simon does for me. But she'll know I'm kind of lying, because nobody can promise you that. Not even Simon can promise me that.

It's strange, how we're all in the same situation. It would be funny, except… it's not.

It's not funny at all.

* * *

Why in the 'verse would anyone want to create a food that you can't eat? Jayne finds it funny that my Ice Planet was so problematic, but I do not see the humor in being unable to consume your meal. Even if it is full of cream and sugar and I shouldn't be eating it anyway, as Simon says.

Simon says is also a game. I remember playing it with the other children. Simon says, Simon says, Simon…

No.

Simon did not say.

Those are false. They are in the garden, outside, with the too calm lady as the teacher and us all in white. Those are not real. The games are not real.

Simon…

I must find Simon. I don't know what is real, I don't know what isn't, and the children are laughing in my head but it's not laughter, now they are screaming…

Screaming…

Screaming…

Simon!

* * *

I am better now. I apologize to any future readers (although there shouldn't be--I am looking at you, potential children that I may or may not have) if they were startled by my behavior.

I am not alone in my head.

Today we went to a space station. That is where I got my Ice Planet. Inara bought it for me. Inara has lots of money from her clients, but she does not spend it on much. She has to give some of it to the Guild, but the rest she keeps. It's in a pretty little wooden box in a drawer in her shuttle. It's a puzzle box. Nobody who does not know the puzzle can open it. I can. Mal can, too, although he has never seen Inara's money box. He used to have a puzzle box, too, at home on the ranch before he left for war.

His thoughts are not as loud as Simon's, but they are deep. So deep that sometimes I worry they are digging trenches in his brain and making him a mite crazy.

Inara likes to buy things for Kaylee and me. She would buy things for Zoe, but Zoe won't let her. She can't buy things for Wash, because Wash is married. I do not know why that means no presents for Wash. I must not get married so that people can keep buying me things. Inara bought something for Simon, once, but Simon is too proud. She knows that it makes him uncomfortable. She does not buy things for Jayne because she does not like him very much. I do not think anyone likes Jayne very much.

That must be sad for Jayne. I am not sure but I think that somewhere deep inside, where even my brain cannot find it, there is a lot of sadness in Jayne.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, that surely someone like Jayne must be the easiest to read.

He is not.

His surface thoughts are easy, but his true thoughts are not. He does not understand why he does things, and if he cannot than how can I?

Humans are very strange.

Inara does not buy things for Shepherd Book because she does not know what to buy him. Except when she bought him a new Bible, but she made me give it to him and say that it was from me.

I said I was sorry about tearing up the pages. He seemed to like that better than the new Bible.

Then he gave me his old one and said that I could fix whatever I liked. I have solved quite a lot of discrepancies in quantum mechanics and the space-time continuum that are contained in that book. Did you know that Jesus could change his mass density at will? It is the only possible explanation for being able to walk on water and ascend into the sky without the help of complex machinery.

I tried to change my mass density, but Mal told me to step away from the ship engine and if he caught me with that number of live batteries again he would kill me himself.

Inara wants to buy things for Mal.

But she doesn't.

Why don't people do the things that they want? Why do they stop themselves? Do they think that they are not worth it? Are they scared?

I could tell them. I could tell them that they do not know what scared is. I could tell them that they should always do what they want, as long as it is not something terrible like rape or murder or talking in the theater during the movie.

Shepherd Book is big on that one.

But I digress. That is a new word that I learned today. I like it. Di-gress – intransitive verb. Dai'gres. To move off the central topic. To deviate, wander, or stray. Chinese symbols: 偏 離 主 題

We went to the mail station to pick up any letters or packages. I did not think it was a good idea. The last time we went to check the mail, a lot of disastrous things happened. Jayne got this awful hat that he wore all the time and it gave me nightmares. I do not know what I would have done if his mother sent him a sweater this time.

Oh, and something happened with a man coming back to life and then dying again. Like Jesus, only he was not as handsome as I think Jesus was. That man was quite popular with women, did you know? They were always coming up and touching his garments and things.

But we went to get the mail anyway. The space stations are rather like big shopping malls used to be on Earth-That-Was. Kaylee loves Earth-That-Was. She is always trying to learn more about it. There are lots of shops and people selling things on space stations. The last time there was even a dead baby cow. That was my favorite part. I was sad to see that there were no dead animals in jars this time, so I had to try and eat my Ice Planet instead.

There was nothing exciting as a dead man or as scary as a horrid mother-made hat this time. Simon didn't get any mail. He didn't want to check but I made him. What if our parents are worried about us and want to write to every mail station in the 'verse to find us and ask us to come back home and they are sorry they didn't believe Simon or me and they love us and they'll let us eat ice cream all day if we just come home please? How are we supposed to know if we do not check?

Inara did not get any mail. She always seems to know when she is getting mail and did not expect any, so she was not surprised. Jayne got an apple and another letter from his mother. Shepherd Book did not get any mail. Wash did not get any mail. Zoe did not get any mail. Kaylee got a nice fat letter from her family. She has three older brothers and a mom and a dad and they all write her all the time, especially her mom who misses her like crazy and wants to know when she is going to get married and settle down and stop flying through the 'verse gorram it! Love you, kisses, xoxo Mommy

Then came the surprise.

Mal got mail.

Everyone was awful nervous, because the last time that Mal got mail it came to life and caused us a heap of trouble, as Mal says. But it was just a letter, so everybody kind of chuckled and Wash said something about it being a bomb. But Inara watched Mal's face. She always watches his face.

"Mal?" She asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's from a prison." Mal's face always does this thing when he isn't sure what's going on but has an instinct that he's not going to like it when he finds out what it is. Mal has very good instincts. "Anyone we know in prison?"

"Not anymore, sir," Zoe informed him.

"Anymore?" Wash is very good at being uncomfortable.

Mal waved the letter around like it was a cheap fan. I have seen nice fans and cheap fans and I know the difference. Some have lovely Chinese verses on them, like poems or pieces on how to behave. They always tell ladies to be demure and meek and sweet. I looked up 'demure.' I do not like what it means. People who are demure get killed real quick in the black.

"I think we should get back to  _Serenity_  before we make anymore talk of this, Mal," Shepherd Book said.

Mal listens to the Shepherd even if he pretends that he doesn't.

There's a cross on a necklace in Zoe's treasure box. It's Mal's. He threw it away after the Battle of Serenity Valley, but Zoe kept it. She's waiting to give it to him when he's ready to believe again.

Wash is the only person who is supposed to know. But I do.

Why do I know things that I'm not supposed to? It's not fair. I don't want these whispers in my head. I don't want to know these things. Not because they are bad, but because they are secret. Zoe told Wash about the necklace while she was crying and she talked about the war and dying friends and I should not know this. It is not my right to know. But I do.

I wish I could cut open my head and tip it and empty out all of the memories that are not mine.

So Mal went onto the ship and we all followed, because that is how it works. He opened it while we all sat down at the kitchen table. I don't think that he would normally want us to be there while he opened a letter but he was confused and did not know whom it was from so he did not mind so much.

His face was rather funny when he saw whom it was from.

"Sir?" Zoe always calls him that. Old habits die hard.

"We're not in trouble, are we?" Wash joked. When Mal did not answer, he looked uncomfortable again. "Are we?"

"It's from Saffron." Mal looked at Inara when he said it. I am not sure why. "This letter is for me, from Saffron."

"What's that bitch want?" Jayne asked.

Every man glared at him, and I could hear one of them thinking,  _language!_

"She's dying," Mal said slowly. "She's dying and… she's written me a letter."

And that was when things got exciting.


	2. Chapter 2

Here is a list of things that can be used as names:

Traditional Female

Language

Biblical/Religious

Nicknames/Terms of Endearment

Male Names

Androgynous Names

Plants

Animals

Mythology

Places

Meanings (Trinity, Honor, etc.)

Food

Made-Up Names

Combinations of Names

Inanimate Objects

Colors

Months and Dates

Books

Media

Miscellaneous

I am listing them because Saffron has an awful lot of names. I wonder how many names there are out there. I think there are more female names than male names, because a girl can have any kind of name that she wants. She can sound boyish or girlie or whatever. But a boy has to have a boy name. It has to be strong.

I do not know what Jayne's mother was thinking when she gave him that name. He got a lot of teasing for it when he was little. Now that he's big and has a big gun, nobody makes fun of him. But he still does not like it.

I want you to draw the scene for you. Not with a picture. Simon says that I used to be excellent at drawing. He said that I could take a quick look at anyone and sit down and draw them just as they were. Like one of those film pictures. We rarely get film pictures anymore. Simon says that I was a genius at it. He says that my favorite artists were the Japanese and the Impressionists. But since the Academy, my drawing skills went right out of me. So I will try to use my words instead.

Here is what the kitchen looked like when Mal read the letter:

Kaylee is sitting next to me on my right side. She is a little sad at the thought of somebody dying, even if it was somebody that tried to kill us. Simon is sitting on my left side. He does not think that Saffron's letter should be read to everybody if it was meant just for Mal.

Zoe is annoyed. She did not like Saffron, but she's not as annoyed as Inara because Wash didn't kiss Saffron. Inara hates Saffron, but she is curious about her. She wants to know about her, so she will sit, and she will listen, until she knows everything. Sometimes I think that Inara could be a politician.

Companions are rather like politicians, in some ways. I wonder if some of them are spies for the Alliance.

Don't. Don't think about the Alliance. That's what Simon tells me. It makes me upset, and then the memories-that-aren't-memories start, and I sort of lose time.

Wash and Zoe are sitting on the other side of the table, with Jayne. Jayne is bored. Wash is curious.

Shepherd Book is sitting at the opposite end of the table from Mal. Inara is near him, because she needs to be as far away from Mal as possible. Book is apprehensive about all of this. Saffron duped him. She made him think that she was innocent. Book does not begrudge her for it.

Begrudge is the new word that I learned today.

But Shepherd Book is worried. He is worried that Saffron has more tricks to play. He is worried about what her words can do.

_Snake in the grass._

His thoughts.

Snakes hiss. Hiss, hiss, hiss.

Sometimes, I hear hissing in my brain, like a loose pipe. Then the hissing turns into a bunch of whispers, but I can never figure out what they are saying. I hope that they will become more succinct. It's annoying.

Mal starts by reading the letter that the prison guard sent. He was in charge of something, but I did not pay attention to that. The letter was very official.

_Dear Sir or Madam;_

_Rest assured, this letter has not been read or tampered with in any way, shape or form. This is merely a report upon the status of Prisoner 210896._

_We did our best to discover her identity, but the farthest back we could go into the various identities was Cecilia Paulson, age of eighteen at the time of this identity's use._

_Personally, I would not take much stock in whatever the letter tells you. In her time served here, Prisoner 210896 lied and seduced her way to many an almost-escape from the facility._

_I would also like to report that the day before this letter was sent out, Prisoner 210896 died of complications from pneumonia resulting from AIDS._

I do not remember how the letter was signed.

Mal is angry. He kind of crumples the letter and throws it onto the table. He does not say anything, but his thoughts whirl with  _I hate Alliance_  and  _sons of heartless bitches_.

He should not keep such anger inside of him. He did not even like Saffron, but she is a good excuse to get angry at the Alliance again. I think it was her own fault that she ended up in prison, but I knew that it was not for me to say anything. Sometimes I forget when I should or should not say something. For a long time I was scared that it had to do with the academy, but Simon told me that I was always like that. I was brilliant, but not good with manners.

Manners are annoying. Honesty is much better.

Mal does not say anything for a long time, and nobody dares to speak. Not even Jayne.

Until Inara does.

Inara makes Mal gentler. He doesn't threaten as much when she is around. He does things for her that he won't do for anybody else.

"Mal?" Inara stands up and moves to take the letter out of his hands. Mal jerks it away. "If you don't want to read it to us, you don't have to."

Mal shakes his head, letting the anger vanish like smoke when you wave your hand through it. "Mighty fine notion of yours, 'Nara, but I'll read it. Damn woman screwed us all twice over, only fair we all hear what she has to say."

Mal has this way of saying Inara's name where you can hardly hear the 'I' at the beginning. Everyone else is very careful to say her name properly. I think it's a very pretty name, but they say it that way because she has status. She is important. But when Mal says it, it's almost a nickname. It's his special way of saying it.

He never feels the warm thought in Inara's mind when he says her name, but I can. I wonder if there will ever be anyone that will make me have warm thoughts like that.

Then I think about all the complications those warm thoughts bring, all of the sorrow and anger and frustration that Mal and Inara and Simon and Kaylee have, and that Zoe and Wash and Shepherd Book once had, and Jayne is scared of having, and I think that it might not be worth it. Wash and Zoe make me think it might be worth it, but Shepherd Book makes me think that it might not.

It can be annoying when you have conflicting results on a problem. You don't see math giving you different products using the same formula. Math is always the same. Numbers follow the laws. They don't break them and they don't bend them and they don't go off and do things that are illogical.

I am digressing again.

When Mal reads the letter he does his very best not to get caught up in the story. He reads it in his voice, dry and desert and the chord of something that sounds like reality and Earth-That-Was. I think that Mal has the voice of a storyteller, if he weren't trying so hard not to say anything at all. He worries about saying too much and letting people see inside of him, where all the hurt and pain and dark thoughts are. But no matter how hard Mal tries, he still reads it well. I don't know about the others, but I started to hear Saffron's voice in my head, like an echo of Mal's voice. Maybe I really could hear her. Maybe she really was in my head.

After all, I am fairly certain that some of the voices in my head are not alive.

Saffron's voice is lusty and full, the vowels round and pursing at the beginning and ends, like dumplings, all stuffed in the middle but pinched and closed at the edges.

I like dumplings.

She tries to make her voice lower than it really is, so it sounds a little fake. Most things about her are fake, but her hair is not. I think that is funny, because the most commonly fake thing about women is their hair color. Sometimes, I can almost hear her winking. Saffron doesn't really wink with her eyes, but with her body and voice.

_That's something that only a companion should know._

Inara again. I do wish that she would stop harping about the Guild and rules and companions. It is clogging up my brain.

This is how Saffron's letter went:

_Dear Mal,_

_You don't mind if I call you by your nickname, do you? I'm sure that certain people on your little ship mind. Anyway, let's not beat about that bush. I'm dying, Mal. I'm in a place where they don't bother to be nice to you and keep the truth from you--as if hiding the truth is nice. But people aren't very nice, are they? They do what they want, when they want, and it's all to get ahead in life. People are very selfish, Mal._

_In fact, you're the only person I know who isn't._

_That's why I'm begging you. Look at me, Mal--I'm begging. There are only two people in this world who deserve to hear my story, and one of them is you. You're a good man. I hate you for it, but you are._

_The other, as you may have guessed, is Durran._

_I do love him, Mal. People don't think I'm capable of love, and maybe I'm not. Not real love, anyway. But my way of loving is real because it's my way. I did him wrong, and I couldn't stand to live with him, but I love him. Or did. Everything about me is past tense by now. I'm a shell. There is the briefest of nows, and then all is behind me. There is no forward. Not anymore._

_That was my goal in life: keep moving forward. Upward, as well, if that were possible._

_Part of this is for both of you. Durran was always so curious about me… he always wanted to know… He really cared, you see. Sometimes I wish he didn't care so much. It would have made everything so much easier._

_And you… you saw me cry. You were the first person to do that since my mother._

_I still hate you a little for that._

_But let's have bygones be bygones, shall we? After all, I am dying. I mustn't cut off the few allies I have left._

_As I said, the biography is for both of you. One of you wants to know, and both of you deserve to know. Miss… what was her name? That companion? She wants to know, too. It really shocked her, how smooth I could be. I couldn't fool her in the end but she saw how good I was. You should have seen the panic on her face when I told her I was your widow. It was laughable. She dearly loved rubbing it in my face when she locked me in that dumpster._

_There's a part that just for Durran, though. I don't expect you to listen but I hope you won't read it. Let's put it this way: you wouldn't watch someone making love, would you?_

_Well, some people might, but I don't think you're one of those people._

_Might as well move on to the sob story, shall we?_

_I was born to a large family in a small town. One horse doesn't even begin to describe that lonesome hellhole. There couldn't have been more than a hundred of us in that place, and eleven of them were related to me. Mother and Father, of course, so hardworking, so honest and upright. Nine siblings. Nine. I couldn't get a word in edgewise or find an inch of the house to call my own. But when I went outside, everyone knew me._

_It's possible to feel lost and confined at the same time._

_You can imagine how badly I wanted to get out of there. Did you know that I wasn't the pretty one? That was my sister. A big fish in a small pond and nobody even recognized it. Oh, I suppose I could have stayed. I could have become the queen of that little pond and all those little fish, but I didn't want that. I wanted out._

_So when a ship stopped by for an emergency refueling, I hitched a ride--without the crew's immediate consent, of course. They were truly pissed when they found me aboard. To be fair to all parties concerned, I think we were all equally startled; they by my presence and me by the fact that they were criminals._

_Oh, the fun we had._

_You know, many people think that a woman is submissive. They think that sex is submissive. They're wrong, you know. Sex is power. But I'm sure Mal's hoity toity friend could tell you all about that. I clawed my way to the top of several little operations. Changed names, of course, because when you're hiding from the law and keeping several different men on leashes you can't have fights breaking out, can you?_

_I had such a life. And I was only in my early twenties. Can you imagine? A favorite trick of mine was to attend fancy parties and dances. I'd rob every man blind within a month after those little shindigs._

_When I met Durran, he was the same as the others. I never stayed in the same place or with the same crew for long. I drifted. That night was a brand new planet, the first dance I'd been to, and he caught my eye. Oh, but we had fun that night. I won't go into details, but I'm sure that Mal can imagine how it went. Durran doesn't have to imagine. Do you remember the dress I was wearing, darling?_

_But then things became different. He was so good, so different from the others… he was genuine. A bit too nice, but that was all right. And I thought… I thought that maybe, just maybe, this was what I'd been looking for. He had money, he was handsome, and I just hoped… oh how I hoped…_

_I really did want it to work out. You're going to have to take that on faith, of course, since you really can't trust a thing that I say. But do take into consideration that I'm dying, I'm in prison, and I really don't have much choice but to be honest, do I?_

_Still, it's up to you. Durran will take everything with a grain of salt. Mal will take it with a bucketful._

_It didn't work out, as you both know. I was bored and discontent. I don't think that I really ever will be content. I have to have more, to keep moving, to be someone new and different because who I am isn't enough. It wasn't enough for my parents to notice me. It wasn't enough to get me out of that damn small town without sneaking aboard. You men have no idea how hard we have to work at seduction, do you? It's an art form._

_Which reminds me--would you, Mal, be a darling and tell that companion of yours that I trained at the temple (there's only one temple, so don't bother me with details) after I left Durran? It was such a stunt, I needed somewhere to hide for a bit until things settled down. He is an important man, after all, and he spared no expense in searching for me. I learned a lot there._

_Why, one interesting thing I learned was about this famed companion--on her way to becoming the High Priestess, they said--only she gave it all up. She has a pirate now, it turns out. Funny, isn't it?_

I am going to interrupt now and say that this is the part where Inara gets stiff. Her entire body seizes up, like mine does right before I lose control and lose time and the screaming starts. I think I know who that companion was. And I think that Saffron knew, too.

Saffron loves to push buttons.

I'll go back to the letter now.

_I had a difficult time getting back to the top after that. I was working with scrap collectors, of all things. After all that I'd worked and the circles I'd moved in… it was annoying, to say the least. I'd been working along the edge, in the outer planets, when I ran into Mal._

_After that… well, it's rather simple, isn't it? Mal knows what happened. I nearly tricked his entire crew and set them up to die. They got away somehow, and then ran into me again when I was posing as the wife of the head of a smuggling ring. Malcolm Reynolds has a habit of interfering with your best plans. It's a special talent._

_You both know what happened when I met him again. I convinced him to team up and we went to rob Durran. I promised myself that I would never do that. You have to believe me--I never wanted to do it. But times were tough, and I had no other choice. You understand that, don't you? We're always on the edge… always just hanging there, the tiniest thread keeping us from falling… and when it snaps…_

_I hated to do that. You must understand that. But survival comes first. It's funny, isn't it? I once dreamed of coming out on top, of being the queen of… whatever. Being whoever I wanted--whoever that was. But now it's all about seeing the next day dawn. I hardly even have that anymore._

_They're going to bury me without a name. It'll just have my prisoner number on it. I wonder, is that planned? Do they hope to demoralize prisoners by further stealing their identity? I could tell them I haven't an identity for them to steal. Like sand on a beach, the water washes me away each time, and I am born anew._

_I'd tell you my real name but then, it's not my real name. A name is supposed to describe you, isn't it? It's your identity. A one-word description of who you are. None of my names are that. It's quite funny, isn't it? The woman with all of her names can't decide which one fits her best. It wasn't Yolanda, although God knows I tried hard enough. Saffron? Saffron was a well-worn coat: comfortable, easy to slip on, but not… not me._

_Perhaps it's fitting that my gravestone won't have a name._

_Anyway, I suppose that I should apologize for nearly getting Mal's crew killed. But I won't. I won't mean it, and furthermore they'll know that I don't mean it._

_I am so afraid of dying._

_Ah, well. I'm sure I could trick St. Peter into opening the pearly gates for me, if such gates do exist. They're far beyond the black, if they do. Right, Shepherd? God, he was so easy to fool._

_Forgive me. Reminiscing about my exploits is the only thing I have left to do around here. The state of the men (and women) around here is nearly appalling. I am bored out of my mind. You'd think they would allow a dying woman some fun._

_Remember to give the sealed part of the letter to Durran. No peeking, Mal. I'll know if you did. Vengeful ghosts and all of that._

_Kisses,_

The spot where the name would be was left blank. The paper was thin and a little see-through on account of the lamp hanging above and shining down its liquid butter light on the page, so I could see where Saffron had dripped bits of ink onto the page on the spot. She must have let her pen hang there, wondering what to sign, before giving up.

I wonder… if you're searching for something, you tend to find it. But what if you don't know what you're searching for? Is it all a matter of chance, then? There is a theory that you call things into your life, but I forget the exact principles behind the belief…

And now my head hurts. Did I get such terrible migraines before? I must remember to ask Simon.

Simon said that I could sketch and paint as well as any master. He said that I could capture the essence of someone. He said…

I think that I already told you this. Why am I bringing it up again?

I apologize for being repetitive. Is it impolite or merely boring?

Here is the really strange thing: I knew what Saffron's letter to Durran said. Nothing else was surprising. Not anything that Saffron said, or the argument that broke out after Mal read the letter (more on that later). People are so easy to predict.

But you can't read a sealed letter, can you? Not unless you're The Professor.

He's the leader of a group of superheroes in some comic books. Comic books existed all the way back on Earth-That-Was, even before a big fight called World War II. Kaylee told me that. Mal liked comics when he was little. He had every issue. I do not find that surprising.

Cecilia is a pretty name. Why didn't Saffron like that name? Why didn't she like Saffron? Or Yolanda? Or Bridget?

How do I know about the name Bridget?

She used a lot of names. I know them all, somehow.

This is what Saffron's letter to Durran said:

_Bâo bèi,_

_I love you. It's quite painful to say. Shouldn't something like that be easy or wonderful? Why is it painful? Is it because I caused you pain?_

_Don't fear for me. Instead, light a lamp and place it on the window by the bed every night for a month in honor of me. Don't do it out of pity or remorse. Only do it if you still love me, as I have always loved you._

_You deserved so much better._

_You have no reason to, but trust me--I do love you. I couldn't give you my loyalty, or my life, but you did have my heart, as small and cold as it is._

_I love you._

_Your Yolanda_

Something about that letter hit a strange note, like when you are hitting a bunch of notes with an instrument--like a piano or something metal--and suddenly there is a wrong note and even though the person keeps playing, and you aren't sure just what went wrong, you know you heard something off.

Simon says that I used to love playing music. The piano was my favorite but I also played the lute, mandolin, guitar (much to Mother's dismay), violin, cello, flute, clarinet, oboe and harp. Sometimes I think that I hear music in my head, but it's wild and uncontained and I know it is not by any composer we know. No composer like that would be welcomed in the Core.

I have this dream where I sit down at a piano, and my fingers start to fly and play on their own, as if invisible elves were making them move and they were the ones controlling my fingers, not me.

Most of my dreams are like that. Whenever I actually have a happy dream, I wake up almost immediately because I do not trust it. The Academy gave us happy dreams to keep us from trying to get out.

Why do people do that? Why do people think it is better to control us? Why do they like it so much?

The problem with writing in a journal is that you can ask all of the questions that you want but you never get any answers. It's kind of rude, but since this is an insentient being I suppose it's understandable that it can't reply. After all, most sentient beings would object to someone writing on their face.

Or stomach.

What is the part of the notebook that you write in called?

I would tell you about the Big Argument, but I am very tired and Simon gave me something to help me have a sleep with no dreams and it is making everything tilt slightly and go a little blurry and my blinks are a little too long and…

My composition is most deplorable at this stage. My state of mind is far too unstable at this juncture.

I would say  _Good Night_ , but it is always night here.


	3. Chapter 3

That medicine did not work.

I had horrible dreams of shriveled bodies that screamed without using their mouths, and too-bright skies, and snarling corpse-faces and the Academy and hisses that were trying to tell me something but I couldn't hear them and flashes of movies that made absolutely no sense.

I've dreamt worse.

So--the Big Argument. I do not know who I should blame. Maybe it was my fault. I was so busy thinking of Saffron's letter and how there was something that was not right that I did not pay attention to the thoughts swirling around me. Everything was going so well, too. Simon wasn't being such a stuck-up popinjay with a stick up his ass (Jayne's words, I kind of like them) and starting to become more of the crew. I am not part of the crew. I do not think I ever will be. But Simon was trying, and I was starting to get hopeful about his prospects. Inara is still leaving but that was the only thing.

I should have remembered Murphy's Law. I think that Mr. Murphy must have lived the kind of life that we do, because I have never seen a pack of people who have so many things go wrong. Even Simon's plan went wrong, and that was really clever.

But Saffron came and messed everything up. It takes real talent to mess things up when you are dead, or at least hundreds of miles away on the other side of the black.

"We are not delivering that letter."

The first way to get on Mal's bad side is to try and tell him how to run his ship. Inara knows not to try it too much, but sometimes she can kind of get away with it. Not this time.

This is when my brain starts to short circuit. I see images, and flashes, and pieces of conversation but it doesn't flow like it should. It's all broken up… like a vase that someone dashed to the ground or a puzzle… but the puzzle is twisted… why must it be so twisted in my head?

Mal and Inara start up first. I remember that.

"You fog things up!" It's ironic that Mal yells that--ironic is the new word I learned today--because things were all fuzzy and foggy for me, too. "You always have. Turn me around so's I can't get my bearings."

"It's not like I'm trying! It's not my fault that you're so gorram difficult to deal with!"

"Well look at that, the high-brow companion actually swears. We oughtta tell the news stations."

"Don't you dare mock me."

"Gotta get my licks in where I can, seein' as you're always looking at me like I stepped in go-se."

"See, this is why I'm leaving! You think that you're the only one getting fogged up here, Mal? You butt in and you make my whole world dizzy with your stupid schemes and presence and… you are insufferable!"

"Wait… you're leaving?"

Kaylee is the only person who can make both Mal and Inara shut up. Everyone looked at them, turning their heads real slow. Kaylee was about to cry. I could hear her thoughts jumbling about as she tried to straighten them out and make sense of it.

"But… but why, Inara?" Kaylee asked.

Kaylee will miss Inara something fierce.

"Because…" Inara can't lie to Kaylee. I don't know why she is leaving. I wish I did, because then I could fix it and stop her and Kaylee would be happy again, and Mal and Inara would be happy, and then I could stop worrying over everybody. Sometimes it's annoying, having to take care of everybody like this.

"Can't you two have this conversation in private?" Simon only gets angry over me and Kaylee. Or is it Kaylee and me? English rules are not like math rules. They change all the time. I wish they'd make up their minds. Kaylee is crying, so Simon is angry.

Mal doesn't like Simon. Simon doesn't like Mal. They will like each other someday. I've seen it. But something has to happen to make them like each other, and I don't know what that something is. All I know is that it hasn't happened yet. I was hoping that the heist on Ariel would be that something but it wasn't.

I blame Jayne.

The voices started when Simon and Mal started yelling at each other. They got so loud I could hardly hear what the two of them were saying, and everything started to fracture again. I remember something about respect, but I don't know who yelled it.

I don't know when Jayne got into it. But I remember him telling Mal that this wasn't the war, and saying stuff about Mal's Browncoat stuff, like losing men and all.

This time it was Mal's fault that I don't remember. Zoe said that Jayne needed to leave the room, and Mal got real quiet on the outside but his mind was filled with images that were so loud I couldn't help but see them.

There was this big machine, shooting ships out of the sky. And faces, all of these faces, dead or dying, lying on the blood-soaked ground. There were flashes of light, and explosions, and I felt Mal's anger flowing from a well of grief, grief so deep in his mind it might never go away, and that grief had a name.

_Spike Ranch_

I know where that is. I use the map in Mal's head and I know. It is near Angel's Landing, on the planet called Shadow.

That planet doesn't exist anymore.

There are other names within that name.  _Mother_  is one. There are other names, mostly men. Ranch hands? But it is all tied up to that one place, to that one name. It was Mal's home.

 _Serenity_  is Mal's home now. But the well of grief flows, and flows, and the water churns and rushes on through his brain, and the anger stays and stays and stays…

The Alliance gave Mal that well. They made that angry river.

By the time the images stopped Jayne or Mal had hit the other one and they were on the table wrestling. Jayne smashed Mal's face into the table but Mal twisted around and kneed Jayne where his man parts were (Jayne's words, and I could not think of another way to say it that would be polite) and then Jayne got Mal in a headlock and Mal punched Jayne in the gut…

Kaylee was screaming by then. Shepherd Book wasn't screaming, his hands all flat and fingers splayed as he tried to calm them down, but neither was listening to him. Simon's knuckles were scraped and I wonder when he was a part of the fight and when did he get pushed out of it. Wash is shouting something, but I don't know what. Nothing that Zoe appreciates.

The stress in the room was very loud and thick and choking. It was like being surrounded by thick, black swamp water, rising and rising up towards me, choking me inside, and I started to panic because I couldn't escape it. I was drowning, and the voices were getting louder but I don't know what they're saying, I don't know what they're trying to tell me, and I can't breathe… I can't  _breathe_ …

Zoe's moving to break up the fight. She will fail.

I have to stop it.

So I did.

* * *

When I woke up, I had restraints on my hands.

They won't stop me from getting out.

I don't remember anything after that except for this phrase… I think Simon said it…

_Eta Kooram Nah Smech._

After that, everything is dark.

It's dark where I was then, too, because I was in a storage closet.

What did I do?

I don't know. But I do know what everyone saw me do, because I could hear their thoughts and see their memories. I knew what they were saying before they said it, like the rerun of a show that I'd already seen.

Watching their memories is like watching eight different television screens. Six of them wink out at some point because I knocked them all out.

I jumped up and attacked everybody. Even Simon. Jayne grabbed me from behind and yelled "Gorram it, girl, it's me!"

But I didn't hear him. I don't think I could hear anything then. It was all silence, like being in a bubble.

Mal got away and got his gun. I got Jayne's. We held them up at the same time, but Simon shouted and I fell.

I wonder where he learned that phrase.

I see through Mal's eyes. I see him check on Inara first, then the others, and wake up Jayne and Zoe. He and Simon and Zoe and Jayne carry me to the storage closet and lock me up. I am asleep the entire time. Then they all walk back and wake up the others, and everyone sits around the table and talks about me.

That is what they're doing now. Talking about me.

This is Saffron's fault. If I see her, I am slapping her for this.

Slaps are not new to Saffron.

"May I see her?"

Simon. Simon wants to see me.

"She's still napping just now. And I believe you've got some storytelling to do."

"I think we all have some apologizing to do," Zoe mutters. I see through her eyes. She is looking at Mal and Simon and Jayne.

Mal chooses not to hear her words. "I am a lost lamb. What in hell just happened?"

"Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a ninety pound girl," Wash chuckles. "'Cause I don't think that's ever getting old."

"We're lucky that no one was killed. And you three goons set her off," Zoe says. "You all know it."

"It's likely," Mal agrees. "I know she meant to kill me 'fore the Doc put her to sleep, which… how exactly does that work anyhow?"

"Safeword." Simon does not want to tell, but everybody is thinking that they are lost and he needs to guide them out of the woods they're in.

Woods…

 _Serenity_  would look nice if we had some trees.

"The people who helped me break River out--they had intel that River and the other subjects were being embedded with behavioral conditioning. They taught me a safeword in case… something happened."

"Not sure I get it." Kaylee has her forehead puckered in the way that Simon thinks is especially adorable.

Simon will explain anything to Kaylee.

"A phrase that's encoded in her brain, that makes her fall asleep. If I speak the words, 'Eta–'"

Jayne jumps back. "Well don't say it!"

Zoe laughs inside but she is normal outside. "It only works on her, Jayne."

"Oh." Jayne is embarrassed. "Well, now I know that."

"In case something happened." The wheels in Mal's brain are churning.

"What?"

"You feel to elaborate on what that something might be? I mean they taught you that fancy safeword, they must've figured she was gonna, what--start uncontrollably crocheting?"

"They never said what–"

"And you never did ask."

Mal throws Simon against the wall. That is my brother. You do not treat my brother like that. I know that Mal is frustrated and worried but you  _do not treat my brother like that_.

I started working on getting out of the cuffs.

"Eight months." Mal cares about his crew. He will never say it but he cares. He hates that they could have gotten hurt this whole time. "Eight months you had her on my boat knowing full well she might go monkeyshit at the wrong word and you never said a thing–"

"I brought her out here so they couldn't get to her. I don't even know how they–"

"My ship. My crew! You had a gorram time bomb living with us! What if she went off in the middle of dinner–"

"She did go off in the middle of dinner," Wash points out.

"Or in bunk with Kaylee? Did that give you a moment's pause?"

I would never go off while in bunk with Kaylee. I wouldn't hurt her. But Simon loves Kaylee. People do stupid things when they love people.

"I thought she was getting better."

Oh, Simon. I wish I were. But the voices won't stop. I can't get better until they stop. I can handle the feeling, the knowing, the memories that aren't mine. I can learn to control it all. But I can't stop the voices. I can't get better until the voices leave my head.

"They should be getting off!"

Everybody looks at him. Jayne is filthy even when he isn't trying to be. He tries to explain.

"The ship! Can't we have a plan where they are gonna be not here anymore?"

"We couldn't leave them now!" Kaylee protests. Kaylee loves Simon. Kaylee loves me. She doesn't want us to leave. Kaylee doesn't want Inara to leave, either. We are not Kaylee's crew. We are Kaylee's family.

Kaylee is lucky that people love her and want to take care of her, because that sweet nature of hers would get her killed right quick otherwise.

I sound a little like Mal.

"No, now that she's a killer woman we oughta be bringin' 'em tea and dumplings! Honest, Mal, why didn't you space her?"

Mal does not have an answer.

Mal is nobler than he will ever admit and most people will ever know. Zoe knows. Inara knows. Shepherd Book knows.

If only they knew of a way to let him know that they know.

"May I see her?" Simon is coming to the locker.

"She goes woolly again, we're gonna have to put a bullet in her."

"It's crossed my mind," Mal says. He is cautious. He will not kill me.

"May I make a suggestion that doesn't involve violence, or is this the wrong crowd?"

"Honey…"

Simon came into the locker and closed the door behind him.

"You have blood on your face."

I didn't realize.

He started cleaning me off, all gentle and kind. More gentle and kind than I deserve. Simon, Simon, why do you always care for me? I was nothing but a bratty sister before, and I'm nothing but a burden now. Why are you so good to me? Why must you love me so?

"They're afraid of me." The fear choked me almost as much as the anger.

"I'm sorry." Simon has no reason to be sorry, and yet he always is.

Sorry. Sor-ry. Adjective. 1. Apologetic 2. Sympathetic 3. Pitiful 4. Very bad Interjection: Used as apology. Chinese symbols: 抱 歉

They should be afraid of me. I am a monster. The voices in my head make me a monster. They twist me and turn me and spin me around, molding me and shaping me until I am not myself and I am something else, something bad, something that will attack everyone and hurt them…

"They should be. What I will show them… Oh God…"

I started hyperventilating them. Simon hugged me and ran his hands through my hair. It is filled with snarls. I need to brush it more often. Maybe get Inara to cut it. It's unmanageable, a forest of dark threads.

"It's okay… it's okay…"

It is not okay, Simon. I don't know if it ever will be.

"Show me off like a dog, old men covered in blood, it never touched them but they're drowning in it… so much loss…"

I don't know what I'm saying. I have a flash, an image, of people… Alliance. Government. High up. They are staring at me, but they do not see me. I do not stare at them, but I see everything about them. I see their atoms and their pores and their rivers of blood. I see their thoughts and their doubts and their fears. I see their parents and their childhoods and I see the things they have done.

What have they done?

Did I know what they have done? Did I know once and forget?

"I don't know what I'm saying. I'm sorry, Simon. I don't know what I'm saying." It's my turn to be sorry.

"It's okay." Simon kept holding me. I always feel safe in his arms. It is an illusion. False. Not real. A lie. But I believe it. It is always safer in my brother's hugs. "It will get better."

"No." I feel the false note of Saffron's letter again, and something curled into the pit of my stomach. I reached up and grabbed Simon's face, pulling it to look at me. "Things are going to get much, much worse."

"Well, the Captain hasn't tossed us in the airlock, so I'd say we're–"

I shook my head. "No, Simon. He has to see. More than anyone… he has to see what he doesn't want to. We are all going to see."

We are all about to see the things that scare us.

"What are we going to see, River?" Simon always wants to know what goes on in my head. It is a dangerous place in there.

I can't tell him. Partially because I don't know for certain. But I have glimpses, and I know that I can't share those glimpses.

"The gypsy woman sits by the cart, telling only half of what she knows… and her dreams make her afraid of the people she will meet…"

I didn't know that I'd said that out loud until Simon gave me an off look.

"River? What are we going to see?"

I tell him part of the truth.

"Death." We will look into the face of Death, and we will see that there are things more horrible to offer… we will hear his cries and taste his stinking breath and feel the slice of his blade…

"Whose death?"

The voices in my head laughed, and they spoke through me and I laughed, uncontrollably, screaming and laughing and screaming and laughing…

My laughs turned into tears as I saw everybody's death. The voices brought them to me on the winds of thought and I smelled the incense as the bodies burned, one after the other, and I felt the heat of the flames climb into the sky. And Simon held me, blind to what I saw, because he is not cursed like I am. He does not have the Mark of Cain branded into his brain.

Bullet in the brainpan. Squish.

Whose death, Simon? You want to know whose death I see? I can't tell you, Simon. I wish I could, but I can't, because everybody dies, Simon. Some die violently. Some die peacefully. Some die before they should. Some die sooner than others.

But everybody dies.

Everybody.


	4. Chapter 4

Here is what happened the rest of the day:

"Well, that was fun."

I hear their voices like echoes in my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull and fading into the darkness within.

"Jayne shouldn't have pushed Mal like that."

"I know how you hate for anyone to speak ill of the Captain, Zoe, but Mal kind of asked for it."

"He was asking for Inara and Simon, I'll give him that. Jayne had no right to say those things. Where was he during the war?"

"Profiteering, no doubt. He's scum, honey. I wouldn't worry about it. It'll all blow over."

"But what if it doesn't? Wash…"

"Look, Saffron shook everyone up a little. Y'think I liked hearing from her? Especially 'cause she made some sense. I felt the same way as a kid. But we're still a crew. These problems have been around for a while and everyone here is stubborn enough that they'll be around for a while yet."

Zoe opened her mouth to protest, but she saw me peering into the cockpit and closed her mouth again. Zoe doesn't like to have private discussions where people can hear. Zoe is very private. She was born on a ship like  _Serenity_  while her parents were on their way to colonize. She never had any privacy, so now she holds it to her chest like a precious gift.

People always take better care of something if they know what it's like to live without it.

I moved on.

Shepherd Book was at the dining room table reading from his Bible. I sat down to watch him read. It is always interesting to watch the Shepherd read. He sounds the words out, as if he is just learning them, and he looks like he is just hearing them for the first time.

Shepherd Book's love of God is real, even if his life isn't.

When he saw me, I thought that I would be in for some advice about God. If God exists, I think He should reward His disciple. Shepherd Book is the most patient man I know. Only Jayne and Kaylee ever listen to him when he talks about God.

But he didn't talk to me about God. He told me that I should try meditation. He said that it might help to calm me down.

After that I walked through the ship. Shepherd Book said it helps to meditate in nature, but there is no nature here, so I had to make some up.

I decided that I wanted my nature to be the rainforest.

The trees are the biggest, and everything is wet and dripping, and there is so much lovely green everywhere. There is no green here in the black.

I think it worked, because I was much calmer after that. I didn't hear any voices, and the only memories in my head were my own.

But I was bored.

It's boring, being sane. I do not like being crazy but sometimes I worry about what I would do with myself if I were normal again. I was very bored in school before the Academy. Would I be bored again?

I decided that it was time to melt into the ship.

I wasn't lying about that. I don't lie. The truth is crazy enough that I don't have to.

It might have been wrong, but I wanted to know what everyone was thinking and they were all in different parts of the ship. So I sat in my room and I cast about my mind and I started to melt into  _Serenity_.

That meditation stuff really works.

First I saw Wash and Zoe in the cockpit.

"I don't want you to do it just because I want it," Zoe insists. "I want you to agree because you want it."

"Of course I want it!" Wash protests. "Is there any way I'm going to get out of this with dignity?"

"I'd say you're pretty much down to castration, dear, but that would be a bit of a roadblock."

Wash stands up, and even though Zoe's taller than he is right then I thought that he was the big, strong one. He takes her hands in his and Zoe's eyes are so hopeful, and a little wet, and I know that whatever they are talking about is something that she wants so, so much. I do not think that she has ever wanted anything so much.

"I want this," Wash says, and his voice is real quiet. I've never heard him be so quiet. "I want to have our child, because I love you and I love us and I want to start a family together, something that's just ours, reckless lifestyle be damned."

Zoe hugs him and bursts out sobbing, and then they start kissing and I really don't want to see that, so I focus on the plastic dinosaurs. If I push hard enough with my mind, I can make  _Serenity_  rock a little and throw them to the floor. This time only the Tyrannosaurus Rex tips over. I need to work on my concentration.

 _Serenity_ senses something, and I shift my focus to that.

It's Inara.

She's taking something, and I know what she's taking because I have a thought from Simon about that. Simon says that I was just as good at medicine as he was, but I didn't like it the way he did, so I just helped him study.

It's medicine in a needle, and she pushes it into her arm. Her lips are pressed tightly together but they tremble, and her hand shakes as she drops the needle into the trash.

_Great romance has nothing to do with being a Companion, Sheydra. You should know better._

_I'm not the one who had a torrid affair with a pirate._

_A who? With a what?_

_It's the talk of the House. The girls all trade stories in the dorms at night._

_I didn't… have a pirate…_

_In one of the stories you make love in a burning temple. I think that's my favorite._

_This is unbearable. Captain Reynolds is no pirate, he's a petty thief. And he never laid a finger on me. All he ever did was rent me a shuttle and be very annoying._

_A year on his shuttle and he never laid a finger on you. No wonder you're leaving._

_I'm leaving because--go away._

_Don't worry. The stories will fade. And your Captain Reynolds–_

_Is none of your concern._

Sheydra doesn't see Inara cry.

I know why Inara is leaving. I know why she left the temple, and why she will never be High Priestess, and why she will not let Mal tell her he loves her or ever tell him back and I wish, I wish so badly that I could run into her shuttle and hug her and cry with her like I know she wants to cry. Inara helped to teach me my composition after I forgot, and she braids my hair, and she is always polite no matter how crazy I get.

I don't want Inara Serra to die.

I think hard, very hard, but there is no cure for what she has. She knows that. Now I know that.

I melt away from  _Serenity_  and I cry and cry and cry, and I feel Inara's black empty feeling, and I sense her body eating away at itself, and I cry until I can't anymore and I fall into the first dreamless sleep I have had since before the Academy.

* * *

When I woke up I wasn't sure how much time had passed. It's hard to tell in the black. So I went to the dining room.

Everybody was there. Simon and Kaylee were doing that thing where they don't speak and pretend not to look at each other.

Did they get into an argument again?

I can't take my eyes off of them for one second.

Wash and Zoe were completely different. They were all happy and together. I swear that I could almost feel their souls mixing.

Falling off a cliff gets you dashed to pieces on the rocks. But is the flight to the bottom glorious enough to make you forget?

Is the flight worth the fall?

Man was born without wings. He had to make them, and even then they are imperfect. We are imperfect. Angels have wings, but angels are supposed to not have souls.

Can you grow a soul the way you make wings?

Mal and Inara were not in the room. They were taking care to not be in the same room together.

I could still feel Inara's emptiness, like a shard of it had broken off and was inside of me now.

Which is worse, a sick mind or a sick body?

Shepherd Book was cooking something. He's very good at cooking things.

That's the thing we'll miss the most when he's gone. He will go--but if he's alive or dead when he leaves us, I can't yet tell.

I tried to look through the others' eyes but everyone was closed off. Either I was tired, or they were closing themselves off on purpose. I don't think they know what I could do. I think they just didn't want anybody to know what they were thinking.

This meant I had to ask Simon what I'd missed. It took him three times to hear me because he was too busy thinking about how to apologize to Kaylee.

I am making a note here not to fall in love, so that I won't forget. Putting something in writing makes it permanent.

_To Future River,_

_Do not fall in love. Really. It's stupid. You'll regret it._

_With Warmest Regards,_

_Past River_

There. That is nice and proper.

Once Simon heard me he told me that he was so proud that I slept, and I didn't wake up screaming or trying to tear apart the ship or crawling through the vents. I did that once. It was fun.

Then he told me that we were going to deliver the letter. Inara had to be the contact so that Durran didn't throw us all into prison, and so she and Mal were both waiting for the other one to bring up the conversation first.

That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, and I have the fetishes of the Alliance government members and Jayne's thoughts to go by. Did you know that there is a fetish for stuffed animals?

I stopped playing with stuffed animals when I was five. This suggests that such a fetish relates to childhood trauma or perhaps stunted love of animals or specific texture affinity or…

I am rambling again.

Wash said that if the Captain and Inara didn't break the ice and start talking soon the job would never get done, and Saffron's evil spirit would descend upon us all. I told him that there is no proof that ghosts exist and that besides, I could protect them.

Wash asked me what I'd protect them with, and I said that I fixed the Bible and it would take care of things.

It took him a minute to realize that I was joking.

I would feel kind of bad about what happened but Wash was already in the kitchen when I got there and not in the cockpit so it's not my fault that he wasn't watching. Something beeped and he went to go check on it and that's when I felt it.

My skin crawling.

Crawling like bugs were inside of me, so much that I could almost see them move, feel them, feel the bumps and ripples, and then I heard the screaming in my head. It wasn't the voices. It was other people that are not people anymore, screaming, and their victims, screaming, and I jumped up and tried to get the bugs out of my skin and stop the screaming and Simon grabbed me and held me.

"What the hell is up?"

Jayne. Again. Must he always ask me what I'm doing? I should think it would be obvious. I'm having a breakdown.

"Reavers," I told them. "Reavers."

And they will come, with their blood afire, and their eyes alite, and they will cut and not bleed, and they will eat and never be filled, and they will feast upon the living for pain is their bread and suffering is their meat…


	5. Chapter 5

I'm sorry to stop writing at such a time. I don't like to leave things unfinished but nearly everyone is a little patched up and Simon needs my help with the medical stuff, seeing as Shepherd Book and I are the only ones uninjured. Inara's still kind of out of it, Mal might as well be out of it because Inara's out of it, Kaylee and Simon and Zoe all can't stand up, Wash broke his wrist and got shot in the leg, and Jayne and Mal both took mean hits in the shoulder. They're like twins. I think it's funny.

Jayne does not think it's funny.

But now everybody is resting, and Wash doesn't need my help piloting the ship at the moment so I can write and explain what happened.

It was quite the adventure. You always expect adventures to be fun, with a soundtrack playing and adrenaline pumping and your blood roaring and you think,  _this is what it's like to be alive_ , but it's not like that at all. Adventures are scary. They tear you to little pieces and put you back together different so that you're not the same as you were before. And you always end up getting blood on you. Those stains are never coming out of my clothes.

When we were little we used to hear stories about terraformed worlds outside of the Core, where it was dry desert and people slept with a gun under their pillow. It was romantic, all the horse riding and gun toting and yippee-ky-ay motherfuckers, but it's not. It's dark and hunger and clinging to a raggedy edge where the ground might crumble beneath your feet at any moment.

I know that I might be starting to ramble again, but it's hard to talk. I used to be able to talk very well. I would just say what I thought and the words would flow easy and smooth and clear like a stream. But now it's all clogged up and muddy and choking, like someone put a dam on the river. When emotions get involved the dam grows.

Damn the dam. Ha, ha.

Mal came rushing in, and so did Inara. They both took one look at each other and then they looked at me.

"What the hell is she on about now?" Mal demanded. He was asking Simon, but he didn't say his name. They don't say each other's names, because that would indicate a form of identity and camaraderie.

It's difficult to tell who is the most stubborn person on this ship.

Never mind, I know who it is.

It's me.

"She says that Reavers are coming," Simon said.

"Oh, no." Jayne is more scared of Reavers than anything in the world. "Reavers ain't here. They can't be here."

"Reaver ship bearing down!" Wash came tearing into the mess from the cockpit. "They're almost on top of us!"

Mal looked like he didn't know who to shoot first--Wash, Jayne, Simon, or me.

"Sir? Can we gun it?" Zoe asked.

"No time," Mal said curtly.

"What do we do?" Kaylee's voice was trembling so much, I was surprised that she could get the words out.

There was a screeching of metal against metal and a thunking noise.

"They're on us," Wash whispered.

"This ain't happenin'," Jayne blabbered. "This ain't happenin', I… I can't die."

"They won't let you die," I told him. "Not for a while."

I think he would have shot me if it had been just the two of us.

"Inara? Is your shuttle ready to go?" Mal didn't look at her when he said it.

"Yes. I have enough supplies for a day or two, and the gas tank is full." Inara looked straight at him. She was challenging him.

_Treat me like an adult. I can handle this. Are you too scared to?_

They are both scared. Children, frightened little children who scream and have temper tantrums because they don't know how to use their words.

"Then that's where we're headed. We'll load up and push off while they search the main ship. They ain't bound to notice a little shuttle."

"Mal?" Kaylee nearly whimpered the word. "C-can I grab somethin' from my bunk?"

She wanted to grab the pink dress and the packet of letters from her family.

"No time," Mal said.

He didn't want to leave  _Serenity_. It hurt him, hurt him deep in his chest.

"Don't you worry, little Kaylee. We'll come back for her. They ain't gonna do nothing to an empty ship."

Kaylee is the little sister that Mal never had; he latched onto Kaylee and she latched onto him. Zoe's his partner but Kaylee's the only one he'll ever admit is his family.

"Grab whatever weapons we've got here. Let's go." Mal spoke very quietly, his voice as tight and short as he could make it, like he didn't want to waste breath or sound.

Everybody grabbed a weapon and holstered them. Jayne just lifted up his shirt.

I don't know how he manages to keep all of those weapons on his belt without his pants falling down.

Simon grabbed his medkit.

There was the sound of the upper hatch being opened.

"Move," Mal whispered.

We all started moving to the shuttle.

"Come on, Jayne. Rearguard," Mal barked, his voice low and taut.

We all moved further down to the shuttle.

"Sir."

Mal looked at Zoe. Wash used to hate it when she called Mal that, like they were still in the army, but after the kidnapping and all, he seems all right about it. Maybe there's something to that electrotherapy.

"We're miles from any outpost. Do you really think the shuttle has enough gas to get us to safe harbor?" Zoe was awful scared. It takes a lot for her to question Mal.

"I don't see any other options comin' our way, do you?" Mal asked. "Everyone, in."

"They're on us!" Jayne shouted, readying his gun.

"They'll break in before we can get the shuttle off," Inara informed Mal.

"Then we'll bottleneck 'em. Pile 'em up until they can't get past," Mal said. "I'll start up the shuttle. Hold them off until it's ready, then we'll slip in and shoot off."

He and Inara looked at each other as long as they could before he vanished into the shuttle.

"River." Simon looked at me. "Into the shuttle. Stay out of danger."

I went to the back of the group, but where I could still see. It took one heartbeat after that for the Reavers to come.

They screamed as us as they came. I could hear the screams, echoing in my head, pounding and pounding like they were trying to bust open a door in my brain. It hurt so bad, and I could feel their anger flooding me, like my blood was replaced with their rage and boiling my body from the inside. It was like an itch deep down in my bones, one that I could never scratch, and I was thirsty, so thirsty, and empty, incredibly empty, and only one thing could fill me… and this  _anger_ , this deep, dark, unquenchable chorus of demons sang in my head, and I teetered at the edge of the pit of hate…

I still hate them, but if that's what Reavers feel, then I can understand them. What could have given them such a powerful itch? What could have caused aggression to grip their minds and throttle their hearts and shove their souls into a Hell of their own making?

_And He will give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways; lest thou dash thy foot against a stone…_

Shepherd Book's thought. It was a prayer in his head, from the Bible.

Those weren't stones we were about to dash against, but while Reavers aren't demons, just men--no, less than men--I found myself hoping that maybe angels were there. If God exists, then surely He wouldn't want us to die like that?

But then, if God exists, then why did He let Reavers come into His 'verse?

He better start answering my questions soon, or He's in for it when I die and go to Heaven.

"We gotta focus." Jayne was giving himself a pep talk, but he pretended that he was making us all feel better. "We just gotta focus and get out of this."

"You really think that any of us are getting out of this?" Zoe asked.

Jayne looked at us: a Shepherd praying, a Companion with her bow and arrow (I've always wanted to try one of those), a doctor, a mechanic, and me.

He looked at Zoe. "Well, I might," he said.

He wasn't joking.

I saw glimpses of what had happened to others, of what might happen to us. I read it in the minds of the Reavers, in their distorted memories, like divining in muddy water or a cloudy crystal ball.

I've heard of a drug called LSD. I'm pretty sure that its effects are similar to trying to see Reaver memories.

But I saw enough, enough to shrink and press myself against the wall in a huddle. I wanted to melt into the ship, but that's just my mind. My body can't follow where my mind goes. The feelings in my head got louder… so much anger… all the pain, all the memories… the memories of victims tortured changed so that I felt their gleeful rage, their twisted joy at the suffering, and the screams of the predators and the prey mingled in my head…

It was all too much. Too much, too much… I could see it, see it all, through the eyes of the victims and the eyes of the Reavers, feel their evil joy and their awful hate, watch as they did those… those things… they roasted a girl alive, cutting off bits of her flesh to eat while she cried for mercy… and there was a woman that they tore each piece of hair out of her head… and a man that they chopped up into little pieces, starting with his fingers and oh, I can feel it, feel the panic and the fear and the anguish, but I can also feel the savageness and the glee and it's all too much, filling me up until there's nothing of me left, and the blood flows and flows and the skin crackles and burns and I can smell the flesh and the sweat and the tears and oh God they eat some of them raw… raping them and biting into the flesh of their neck, feel the tendons snap and bones crunch and the spurt of blood and oh, God, oh God oh God…

I felt Simon but I couldn't see him.

"I can't shut them up," I told him. "They won't shut up…"

Screaming, and screaming, and begging and pleading and moans and whimpers, dying away into nothing as they pass away, their life flowing out with their blood… and the Reavers lap it off the floor, and rip out arms and legs and gouge out eyeballs with their dirty fingernails and  _they are still alive the entire time!_  They won't stop screaming, they won't stop screaming!

"It's okay," Simon told me.

He really has to figure out something new to say when I go haywire.

"They're all made up of rage." It wasn't much, it barely scratched the blood-red surface of what I felt and saw and heard but it was all that I could get out. "I can't…"

"Just stay low. I'm right here," Simon promised.

I wish he wouldn't promise so much. It makes me scared for the day he'll make a promise and die trying to keep it.

I started to cry, and I think I whimpered a bit, too. It sounded like someone else was making those noises from far, far away, a ghost of me, outside of my body, sobbing and whining like a kicked dog. Show me off like a dog… kick the dog…

"It's okay. Shh, River, it's okay." Simon stroked my hair. "You just stay out of the way. We're going to take care of this."

This all passed in the space of exactly four seconds and twenty milliseconds.

Then they were on us.

"She picked a sweet bung of a time to go helpless on us!" Jayne shouted as they began to fire.

I could feel everybody glare at him.

"Nobody shoots unless they get past our fire!" Zoe shouted.

I could feel Kaylee shaking, and she wasn't even crouching near me.

"Oh, I didn't plan on going out like this. I think we did right, but…"

"I never planned… anything," Simon replied.

To paraphrase Jayne, they picked a sweet bung of a time. Of course they would wait until we're all about to get raped and hung from meat hooks and skinned alive and our bones all broken and our fingers and toes chopped off and fed our own ears and gutted slowly and our intestines roasted and whatever else I can't recall without vomiting to finally admit what everyone on  _Serenity_  has known from day one.

"I just wanted to keep River safe. Spent so much time on  _Serenity_  trying to find us a home I never realized I already had. My one true regret…"

I think he touched her cheek then, but I'm not sure. My eyes were kind of crossed with the pain from all the screaming in my head.

"My one true regret in all of this is never being with you."

"With me? You mean to say, sex?"

"I mean to say…"

I could hear the cartridge of Kaylee's gun snap home. She wasn't shaking anymore.

"Hell with this. I'm gonna live."

Zoe shot the first Reaver in the head. Others kept coming but so did Zoe, standing up and shooting him, calmly walking towards them… it was like she was in a trance, her world narrowed down to the barrel, and the gun, and the target. She got out of ammo real quick, but the others couldn't fire because the hallway's so narrow they probably would've hit her.

"Zoe, gorram it!" Jayne shouted.

"Move, honey, move!" Wash yelled. His voice startled me right out of the screams and rage. He hadn't said a word this entire time. Fear was radiating off of him, like tiny pulses.

A Reaver came at Zoe with a blade but she blocked it, flipping him, wresting the blade free and swinging it down, burying it into him, but she was rushed from behind…

"Zoe! Get yer ass back in the line!" Jayne shouted.

Zoe looked up… she was almost confused, I think. Jayne broke her trance.

Stupid Jayne.

The Reavers sliced at her back, cutting deep. An arrow lodged in his neck and I saw Inara pull up a fresh arrow. Her hand was only shaking a little.

Wash was over to Zoe quick as can be, pulling her back towards us, and Jayne opened up with the automatic and fired again and again and again, cutting them down like blades of grass. It was like a curtain of bullets, and Wash dragged Zoe to safety.

Safety is relative. Nowhere on  _Serenity_  was safe with Reavers about.

That was also when Wash got hit in the leg. I think it was one of Jayne's bullets, since he was firing so many to give Wash cover to drag Zoe. He didn't complain about it, not once, and nobody knew he'd gotten shot until later. We still don't know how he broke his wrist. Wash doesn't even know.

Simon checked on Zoe with Wash while Kaylee started firing. She kept squinting, closing first one eye and then the other, but she managed to hit often enough.

"Spine's intact," Simon informed us.

"Just gimme a bandage," Zoe muttered. Her teeth were clenched so tight I thought we'd have to pry them apart.

There's this spray on bandage that Simon has--I always thought it was rather fun. It's like shaving cream, where you spray it on as foam, but it hardens into a kind of elastic covering. It won't last long, but it does well for emergencies until you can bandage it up properly.

One time, I took a can of the stuff and sprayed it all over my bedroom. Simon was not happy.

Jayne had to switch weapons then. I wondered when he would pull out Vera. The Reavers were firing all sorts of sum and substance at us, like nail-balls and blades.

"Oh, now you're likin' guns, huh? Cheaters!" Jayne yelled.

"Might wanna hurry up with that shuttle, Mal!" Wash shouted. "You okay, honey? Just lie back."

"No… no, gotta fight. Gotta keep fighting." Zoe tried to get up. She couldn't.

Jayne got hit in his shoulder but he just grunted and kept firing. Jayne's real brave sometimes. Then Kaylee screamed.

Simon and I both turned to look.

Inara helped Kaylee up, and I could see these dart-things all in her, all over, frantically trying to pull them from her… don't do that, Kaylee, don't do that… and screaming, her eyes all wide and her mouth just hanging open…

I think Simon's heart jumped right up to his throat.

"Everybody fall back! Fall back!" Zoe yelled. Wash helped her stumble into the shuttle, Jayne kept firing, Inara dragged Kaylee, and I watched. Then Simon grabbed my wrist and pulled me in.

"Almost ready for take--what in the gorram…?" Mal stared at Kaylee. "Those fucking bastards…"

He grabbed his gun from his waist and started firing with Jayne. A nail-ball came in, missing most of him but getting his left side. Mal didn't move so Inara flinched for him.

"Jayne! Grenade!" He shouted.

"Very last one…" Jayne threw it.

"They're gonna get in…" Zoe whispered. She was fading fast.

"Can close it…" Kaylee's voice was like a sigh of wind. "From outside…"

"No one's coming back from that," Wash said.

Zoe tried to stand. She failed. "Sir? How much ammo do we have?"

Mal looked at Jayne.

"We got three full cartridges and my swingin' cod. That's all." He held up his hands like it was Mal's own damn fault this was all happening.

"We have to get this shuttle moving!" Inara cried. She kept holding Kaylee like she was a baby, cradling her.

"When they come, try to plug the hole with 'em…" Mal instructed.

Kaylee cried out. She was trying real hard not to cry.

That was when I felt something in me tighten.

"I'm starting to lose some feeling here… I think there's something in them darts they throwed at me."

Reavers want their victims alive. Unconscious people don't put up such a fight. They like a fight, like to feel them struggle, like to hear the screams and the wails and the begging… make them beg, make them animals, and when I thought of Kaylee in their hands and what they would do to her I felt myself tighten even more, like Inara's bowstring when she pulls it back.

Simon moved to her. "Lie still. I'm going to give you something to counteract the–" He turned to look for his bag.

His medical kit was in the corridor outside of the shuttle.

"My bag," he murmured.

Have you ever been on something that's going super fast, like a roller coaster? I was on one, once, when I was little. I was little enough that I know it's one of my memories, not a memory that people gave me. It made my stomach do flips and surge and flop like it was jelly and a wave and  _Serenity_  all at once. But when I got off, it was so still, and the ground was so solid and  _there_ , I couldn't move at all. It was like the very air was frozen, and the whole planet stood still.

What I'm trying to say is that Simon…

Simon…

They shot him.

In the stomach.

Bullet in the organs. Thump. Squish.

He kind of spun on his foot… and he looked so confused, and for a moment he was ten years old again… and then he slammed onto his back.

He couldn't even get any air.

Inara ran right over, pressing down with a cloth she'd ripped from her dress and putting pressure on the wound.

"My bag. Need… adrenaline… and a shot of camphor for Kaylee… I can't… River?"

"I'm here." I crouched down and took his hand.

"River… I'm sorry…"

Always sorry. You are always sorry, Simon. My protector. My shelter. My savior. My brother.

"No… No… You can't go," I told him. "You're not allowed to go."

I felt it just before it happened. The Reavers cut the power.

Everything was dark.

Life is ironic. I think that God has a twisted sense of humor, because He makes things funny when they shouldn't be.

As the lights went out, I felt something turn on within me.

I will not fall in love. But I do love, if that makes any kind of sense.

I love Simon. I love Kaylee. I love Inara. I love Mal. I love Shepherd Book. I love Zoe. I love Wash. I even love Jayne. Well, kind of. Maybe.

People are rather stupid when they love someone.

"I hate to… leave…" Simon was whispering now.

"You won't," I told him. "You take care of me, Simon. You've always taken care of me."

I stood up. My mind is gone, and I might never get it back. Instead I have nightmares and fragments and tiny, niggling whispers, sharp shards like glass that cut and poke and I can't sleep, there's a pea under my mattress and I can't sleep.

My mind is not my own.

But my life is. And these people are. They are my crew. They are mine. They took care of me. Even Jayne has taken care of me sometimes. I love them.

Nobody will ever take what I love.

Never again.

"My turn," I told him.

I ran for the door, diving, my brother's cry chasing after me and pushing me through. I landed in a roll (it was a rather good one, I think) and hit the button to close the doors. They started sliding shut, and I grabbed the medkit, throwing it through. I made to dive through too--there was just enough time, I know that I would have made it, and if I didn't it would have killed me so I'd have escaped them that way--but then I felt them. Warm hands. Dead hands. Grabbing me, snatching me, snatching my body like my mind was snatched, tugging and holding and tearing, dragging me back.

I think I screamed, but I don't remember.

I do remember that Mal flung himself at the door, but it was too late and it shut with a shudder. I heard three prayers whirl through my head.

_Please God, please take care of River..._

_Oh Lord, that poor child…_

_God, I ain't been too good but if you could not let us get caught I promise I'll be good. And, uh, don't let River die. She's crazier than Mal but she ain't too bad._

Kaylee and Shepherd Book praying are things that I would expect, but I never thought that Jayne would pray for me. I wish I had time to look into his thoughts just then because I wonder how Jayne can be Jayne and yet he prays to God and is scared of Reavers.

I wonder.

Oh yes. The Reavers. How could I forget?

I can't. I will remember this. They could stick me back in that chair, and strap me up, and stick a needle in every pore in my body and I would remember, I would remember how it felt.

They were swarming over me, living death, rage bottled up in rotting flesh, blood and sweat and screams all knitted together, cat's cradle with a tarnished spoon… little boy dead and the man's left the moon… I could feel their hands and smell their breath and feel their thoughts, twisted and mangled like rusted metal.

They're a mob. They're ants, without thought, without anything other than destroy, and maim, and blood. They want blood. They want screams.

I will give them screams.

Their own.

I have killed men before. These are just men. They are less than men.

And I am more.

I let the feeling surge over me, that feeling of  _more_ , of knowing, of seeing before it happens, of seeing through other's eyes. I didn't stamp it out, I didn't stop it up, I let it come over me.

Simon is right.

I do so love to dance.

I moved, using the walls, the ceiling, flipping and turning and spinning and snatching and moving, always moving, ducking and leaping and sliding and jumping, whirling, whirling, whirling. I was the eye of the storm. I was in control.

Nobody takes who I love.

Nobody takes my life.

Not anymore.

Rivers of blood, and they are drowning in it, but I am a River and I will flush it all out, fill them with their own blood, choke them on their own red waters until they sink beneath the waves and they are finished. I am the sacrificial lamb, rising up against those who would slaughter me, and I will make a feast for the gods out of them, and I will become the lion. I am the force of nature. I am the living weapon.

I am River, and I will sweep them all away.

When I opened the doors, I must have looked a sight, because everyone froze and Jayne and Mal raised their weapons. When they saw who it was, Jayne peered behind me.

"Where are they?" He asked.

"Gone," I told him.

Everybody stared at me, their thoughts all frozen like trains that had crashed and gone tumbling over the bank and couldn't get back on track.

Shepherd Book recovered first. "You look a sight, child." He walked over to me. "Let's get some of that blood off you so that you can look at your brother without scaring him. He's near enough death that one look at you'll knock the life right out of him."

He took his black coat off and started wiping off my face. I looked down at my hands.

Tiny streams of red were running down, mapping out the grooves in my skin, making my palms glisten. I can only imagine what the rest of me looked like.

When he'd wiped me off, Shepherd Book draped the coat over me. I realized then that I was shivering. He led me over to Simon and I crouched down again.

"River… you shouldn't…"

I smiled. "You don't have to be sorry anymore, Simon," I told him.

Kaylee had his head in her lap as she leaned against the wall. I smiled at her, too.

Well, that's one pair of stubborn knuckleheads dealt with.

I learned that word from Jayne. His brain is the best when I want insults.

Shepherd Book and Inara, following Simon's instructions, have patched everyone up; still, only the Shepherd and Inara and I can really stand. Wash has crutches, Kaylee can hardly sit up, Mal's whole left side is buggered up and that includes his leg, and Jayne's got so much metal in him I'm surprised he didn't die on us. Simon manages to stand but he needs to lean on Shepherd Book to walk, and Zoe needs Wash.

"Well, all things considered, that didn't go down too bad," Jayne declared.

This from the man with more bullets than brains in him.

Oh. Simon needs help with changing everyone's bandages.

I think I will make Jayne's just a little too tight. It's fun to hear him curse a blue streak.

I'll be back.

* * *

I've returned; now for the rest of the story.

I feel it just before it happens.

Inara gets all lightheaded and weak, and I know what's coming.

I look at Mal. "Catch her," I tell him.

Mal looks at me, then at Inara, and his arms come out and catch her just as she falls to her knees.

"Syringe… in the drawer…" She pushes the words out through dull lips.

She didn't take her medicine today.

Mal slowly lowers Inara to the floor to lie down as she passes out.

"Inara?" Kaylee manages to move over to her. "Inara?"

Inara is Kaylee's best friend.

Mal looks down at Inara and I swear I can hear his heart crack.

"What's wrong? Simon…" Kaylee looks at him, looks at him for answers that will not come. "What's wrong with her?"

Mal looks at Simon and his heart cracks a little more.

"Her pulse is weak. I'll have to do a thorough examination to know exactly what's the matter, but I'm guessing it's something internal. It might just be an iron deficiency." Simon is very calm.

Simon belongs in a hospital, helping people. But if he was in a hospital helping people and being an amazing surgeon and earning lots of money and making our parents proud, he wouldn't know Kaylee and I don't think that he would ever know love.

Life is so twisting and turning and it's not fair that no matter where you are, it's not exactly right. If you have one thing, you lose another. How is that right?

I just won't fall in love. Things are much easier that way. Then my heart will never crack, and I will never have to choose between two lives that aren't exactly right.

"Captain?" Kaylee starts sniffling.

"I'll take her to medical." Mal lifts Inara like he's waited to do this for months, and when her head rests against his chest I swear his heart is entirely in two and the blood is rushing through the middle like a river when the dam is broken.

He holds her like she is made of Dresdon china and looks at her like she is the God he has abandoned.

Did God abandon Mal? I wonder.

We are not allowed into the room while Simon examines Inara. I know when she wakes up, because I sit next to Kaylee and I listen to Inara's thoughts and I feel them start to jump and move. For a moment I see things through her eyes, blurry images, and Mal's face and Simon's face, but then it's gone and I'm seeing through my eyes again.

Kaylee clings to me like I'm the one that needs comforting.

If I had a sister, I'd want it to be Kaylee. I once thought that I'd like Inara to be my new mother, since my old mother didn't want the job anymore, but since Inara is dying I can't care about her. I don't want my heart to crack.

It's not good for my health.

When Simon comes out, Mal stays in the room with Inara. Everyone looks at him, but nobody dares to say anything.

Simon looks older than I have ever seen him. He can't say it. I wasn't there, because I was at the Academy, but I know that he never lost a patient. He has never had to deliver bad news before.

So I say it instead.

"Inara is dying of a terminal illness," I recite.

Everyone looks at Simon, who nods.

"Which one?" Zoe asks.

"GDS," Simon says. His voice has lead weights hanging from it, making his words sink to the ground.

Gold Dust Syndrome. It's named after the colored dust that companions wear on their skin to make it glitter and shine. Companions get it more than most people, because even though they are careful with their clients their temple is on the planet where the sickness started. They say it's in the air. Something went wrong during terraforming.

GDS likes to kill nice and slow. It will take Inara years to die.

I do not know what I was thinking.

I don't even remember doing it.

I just remember standing by Inara. She looked real weak, but she gave me a nice smile. Companion training.

The next thing I remember was my hand on her arm and then everything was dizzy, and Simon was yelling my name, and when I could see colors again I was on the floor.

"What were you thinking, River!?" Simon demanded. He has not demanded anything of me in a long time.

"Draw it out, transfer it." I tried to explain, but my words were getting jumbled and halting and slow again, and my brain was short-circuiting. I hate when I can't remember my words. "I wanted to take it out of her."

Inara got off the bed real slow and leaned down and smiled. This was a real smile, not a companion smile. I liked it much better.

"Please don't try that, River," Inara said, and her voice was awful sad. "I don't want you to try that."

When someone is dying, you kind of have to do what they ask you. Especially when they say please. So I nodded.

Inara gave me a big hug. Her hair was the sweetest thing that I have ever smelled, and I could name every flower and fruit that went into the shampoo she'd washed it with, and the oil she'd combed through it, and the perfume she'd dabbed in.

"You are a very sweet girl, River," Inara told me.

Inara always sees a sweet girl when she looks at me. I think I remind her of the girls at the temple, or perhaps of herself before she joined the guild. Inara had to join the guild to save her family.

She lost them anyway.

Wash stuck his head in. "I hate to disturb the little moment we're having, but most of us have more blood outside our bodies than inside and we're still very much attached to a Reaver ship."

"I can… detach us…" Kaylee whispered.

"You rest, _mei_ _mei_ ," Mal said. He looked at Wash. "You and me – you think we could figure it out?"

Wash's mouth did that thing where it vanishes because he's pressing his lips together so tightly. "If it's similar to the last trap they strapped to this old girl, then we should be able to cut free."

"Better get on that." Mal led Wash out. "Get them patched up," he told Simon.

He meant  _take care of Inara_.

They're talking right now.

I'm going to see what they say. I'll be right back.


	6. Chapter 6

Usually when I get a memory, it is like a piece of glass from a plate. It's a shard, a broken fragment of something larger that I cannot always fully understand. But sometimes there is so much force there, so much emotion behind people's thoughts that I am overwhelmed and consumed by someone else's mind and for a short while, I am not River. I am that person.

The last time this happened, what I felt was guilt, and conviction, and doubt, and pride, and fear.

_She has been inspected by key members of Parliament._

That comes from Simon. It has to do with that last time, but I do not know how it fits.

This time, it was Mal and Inara. They were arguing in her shuttle, their thoughts and emotions screaming at themselves and each other. I couldn't think for all of the images and sounds and smells and feelings running through me. I could only sit in my bunk and let it wash over and hope they would shut up before Simon and Shepherd Book needed my help with dressing the injuries again.

"It's none of your business, Mal! It's my issue and if I don't feel like sharing something personal then I have every right to keep it to myself!"

_A part of me is so tired… so tired. A part of me wants to go and be with them. Do you see me, Mal, or do you only see what you want to see? Can't you see I'm exhausted? I can't do this anymore. I had to be the strong one all of my life and I can't handle it. I can't…_

"Like hell it is! You're wastin' away inside, Inara. Your very blood's poisoning you! How the hell is that not my business?"

_Joined up 'cause I didn't see the need for a government several systems away to call itself the boss of us. Never did nothing for us, anyhow. Figured that we deserved a local government, one that we created, something that we could rely on--not one that didn't exist until it was time for taxes._

_Then they got rid of it all. It was like one of those old movies--destroying a whole planet like that. Mama, Curly, Virgil, every last gorram one of 'em… all gone in a second. War took on a whole new meaning after that._

_So you look me in the eye and tell me that losin' one more person in my life ain't my business._

"Need I remind you that our relationship is strictly professional? I am not a part of your crew!"

"Is that so? Try tellin' that to Kaylee. Or the Shepherd. Or River, even."

Okay, Mal, you leave me out of this.

That last comment hurt Inara.

_I was the oldest. I had to take care of things. Mother was too sick and Father hadn't been seen since two months before Lance was born. He was sick, too. And Samantha… I was eleven. The perfect age. They don't pay you until you're through the first four years of the training but they send your family money, and that was all that mattered. Snuck them food from the temple, too._

_But Mother didn't get better, and neither did Lance. They took medicine but it didn't work._

_I think I'm dying the same way they were._

_I hadn't even turned thirteen yet._

_Samantha… Kaylee looks almost exactly like her. Same innocent look in her eyes, same big smile, same… same sparkle when she sees people she likes…_

I didn't get any words at that point, just a flash. A girl, sobbing. Blood on her thighs. Torn dress. Hot bath.  _"Dirty, Inara, I'm all dirty…"_

Bath filled with blood.

_She begged me to make her clean._

" _I feel dirty inside, Inara… oh God, it hurts…"_

" _We'll get you to the temple doctor, he'll help…"_

" _Why won't it stop bleeding? Inara, make it stop… make it stop… dirty…"_

_She just wanted to feel clean again._

Mal could tell he'd hurt her feelings, because he started guilt tripping again. In his head, of course. He never apologizes out loud.

Stupid Mal.

"Now get out of my shuttle before I find a sword and use it to smack you out!"

Smack him? With a sword? Aren't swords used for stabbing?

Stay, Mal. Stay. I need one or both of you to say what you're thinking before I get crazier than I already am.

But he left.

_There ain't a God if Inara is dying._

I think that if Mal really believed there was no God, he wouldn't be so angry with Him.

We're not angry at things that aren't, but things that are.

* * *

I went to see Inara.

She was fixing her hair. It calms her down.

I stood there for a bit because I wasn't sure what to say.

How did she keep going?

How did she move on?

She lost everybody she tried to take care of. And when she got sick, she lost her new family. She left them all behind so that they wouldn't have to see her suffer.

I thought of Simon. He left behind everything he ever wanted to take care of me. I thought of Mal, who left behind his family for a few months only to lose them forever.

Something prevents me from moving on. I try and I try and I try but I can't. There's something blocking me, like a wall or something and I can't move forward, only around and around in circles.

How do they do it? How do they keep walking when they should fall?

Shepherd Book moved on because of God. He calls it salvation, but I don't think salvation is found just in God. I think we find salvation in ourselves.

I think Mal and Inara are each other's salvation, but only Mal can let himself open up to her love and only Inara can become brave enough to accept his love.

Which does nothing to answer my question.

Inara finally noticed that I was standing there, and she smiled--a real smile--at me. I still didn't know what to say, so I asked her if I could hug her.

She said yes.

I hugged her for a long time.

"I'm sorry." Words are never enough. It's like my emotions are a deep well and every time I dip my bucket in all I get is a small pail of words that barely describe what I'm feeling.

I think that Inara knew that I was apologizing for a lot more than just her fight with Mal.

"You remind me of someone," Inara told me.

I get a flash of who Samantha was. Bright and happy like Kaylee, but afterwards… after the alley and the man and scrubbing until her skin hurt… she was a different Samantha. I remind Inara of the second Samantha, the one with the pain and the scars and the nightmares. The Samantha with the sparkle in her eyes, and the Samantha with the blood running down her wrists.

Well, I did have blood running down my arms a few hours ago, so that part is accurate.

Inara crouched down so that she was looking up at me. I'm not a child, but it's easier for Inara to see me that way.

Inara is so afraid. She's afraid of being alone, and she's afraid of getting close to someone she'll only have to leave when her body finally gives in.

"I'm sorry too, River," she whispered.

And I knew that she knew that I knew, and that she's okay with my knowing.

And I wish more than ever that I could fix everything.

The words are blurring on the page. Why am I crying? Am I crying because I am feeling these things on my own? Or is this leftover from seeing Mal and Inara's pain?

I wish I knew.

_I wish I may, I wish I might…_

There's no use wishing on a star, because by the time the light of the star reaches you the star has already died, so you are really making a wish on a dead lump of rock or a black hole.

I know this, and yet I wish…

I wish…


	7. Chapter 7

Everyone is feeling better. The Reavers did some damage to  _Serenity_  so Simon and Kaylee are fixing it up.

They'd fix it up a lot quicker if they didn't keep stopping to have sex. One time I was crawling through the vents and peeked in.

I can tell you right now that is not something I am ever doing again.

Mal and Inara aren't talking to each other.

Their thoughts are loud and bothersome, because they don't ever stop. At least when people talk you can tell them to shut up. You can't tell people to stop thinking. It's not polite.

I think that Inara understands better than Mal. She knows that in the end she doesn't like the Guild or being a Companion. She is proud of how well she does it but she doesn't like it.

Did you know that the Guild doesn't enforce yearly checkups?

That's not how Inara got sick, but it still makes me angry. That has been happening a lot lately, where I get angry over things that happen to the other people on this ship.

Inara knows that she'd be good for Mal. She's just scared. But Mal won't even let himself think that Inara cares for him. He thinks he's not worthy.

I say that's a load of horseshit.

I got that from Jayne.

 _Serenity_  is anxious to get going again. I can feel her, thrumming, wanting so badly to become airborne. I want to fly, too.

I wonder who will snap first, Mal or Inara. It will be one of them. I know that. I just don't know who or when or how.

There was a strange sound just now, and I can feel the engine whirring again.  _Serenity_  is fixed.

I glare at the mirror as I walk past to leave my bunk. I do not like the River who looks back at me. She says nasty things and sometimes when I look, her eyes are just black hollow holes. Other times, she looks like a Reaver, or has blood dripping down from the needle holes in her head and arms.

She's called Deep River, because I can't see the bottom and her waters are dark and cold.

* * *

There's been a hitch, as Mal likes to say.

There is a lot of Alliance activity around Bellerophon. It has floating houses over the ocean where everybody rich lives, but parched land with settlements, and it's a border planet so there shouldn't be so much Alliance activity here.

I wonder if Saffron has anything to do with this.

"Looks like they've set up an inspection point," Zoe says. She takes the news calmly. Zoe takes everything calmly.

"We'll have to get in the same way we did on Ariel," Mal decides.

"And that wasn't a gorram pain in the ass," Jayne mutters not so quietly. I do not think that Jayne is physically capable of lowering his voice.

"Positions, everybody!" Mal calls out over the intercom. "Ariel Operation, back by popular demand for a repeat performance."

There's a pause, and then Simon appears and grabs me. We're going to hide in the smuggler's hold. It would have been better if Simon could put me back in the cyro box, but for such a short trip it might do things to me.

I've already had things done to me.

Simon makes me slip into the hold first. I remember the first time I was here, hiding from Shepherd Book's hair. That thing is a monster. Sometimes I can feel it watching me, waiting to come loose and strike.

Simon crawls in next. He has to curl up like a baby in the womb, but I have just enough room to spread out a little. Mal and Zoe secure the door and place two crates in front of it--any more and it would look like we were hiding something.

"Why do you still have that journal with you?" Simon whispers.

"I thought you wanted me to write in it," I reply. This was his idea, not mine.

"Yes, but maybe not while we're in the dark hiding from the authorities," Simon says. He tries so hard to be patient with me.

"I can write fine in the dark," I tell him. It's true. You don't need to see the words on the page. Your hand simply has to remember how to move to make the letters.

This is why my handwriting is slightly slanted and sloping right now. I apologize for the inconvenience.

I know we are going to get by safely, but Simon is very nervous. He is always nervous that things will go wrong. Kaylee will help him with that.

We're through now. I pat Simon on the shoulder. "It's okay," I tell him. "We did it."

Simon lets the breath out of his chest in a shaky whoosh.

* * *

"Now what do you suppose that was all about?" Jayne asks as we emerge.

"Blue Sun," I tell him.

Mal's face hardens. "What're you talkin' about?" He asks.

"Blue Sun," I explain. "They're here."

"That's why we got the Alliance crawling everywhere?" Zoe looks over at Mal.

I feel a stirring inside of my mind.

_A sound so high that it's not sound at all, your entire body vibrating with it but you still can't hear it. A raggedy cough, and then another and another, shake you, the breath rattle in your lungs. When you raise your head there's blood running down your nose. It tickles, and then suddenly you taste blood in your mouth, and your fingertips feel weird, magnetic, and heavy. You look and there is blood coming out, seeping from under your nails. Your stomach wrenches and you vomit a little in your mouth. Your skin feels too loose, fragile, like it's no longer attached to you but merely a paper bag surrounding you and the coughs continue until you choke, blood everywhere, blood flowing out of you, and you think you just shit your pants but it's not normal because it feels like you're getting rid of your very organs and you're emptying out and now the pain is coming, pain, pain, fountains of pain and fountains of blood and your ears fill with that unhearable whining and you can't draw breath…_

"River? River!"

"Lay her down, lay her down!"

"Breathe, River, look at me and breathe!"

"Ow! She hit me!"

"River!"

"Come here,  _mei mei_."

Calm. Amidst the panic, a calm voice, a soothing voice.

I feel arms wrap around me and that mix of sweet smells and someone rocking me gently. "It's okay, baby. Just breathe."

The pain lets me go and I come back.

Inara is holding me, cradling me, and I'm clinging to her. Jayne has a fat lip and both Mal and Simon are panting hard. Kaylee's eyes are wider than our dinner plates. Shepherd Book clutches something in his hand, something for prayer. Zoe stares calmly.

Wash is the first to speak.

"What was that?"

"I… I don't know," Simon says. He crouches down to me. He is scared for me. I scared him, made him think something was happening to me. "River? Are you okay?"

I clutch at Inara. She smoothes my hair away from my face. "She will be," she tells Simon. "She just needs a little time."

I am reminding Inara of Samantha right now.

Inara goes to stand up but I tighten my grip. If she lets go of me I'll float away, no tether, into the emptiness…

"We're going back to my shuttle," Inara tells me. She stands up and this time I let her, and she guides me out of the room.

I can feel the worry of the others behind us, following us. I wonder what I did this time.

* * *

Inara washed my hair and brushed it carefully, humming the entire time. She didn't say anything about what happened. She just took care of me.

Be careful, Inara. I don't want to lose another mother.

It felt nice, just to be taken care of, and not the way Simon takes care of me. He always wants to protect me from something, fix me, make me better. Inara just made me feel nice.

"What did I do?" I needed to know in case I had to apologize. Shepherd Book spent an entire afternoon working on that with me once. Apparently apologies are very important.

Inara was reluctant to say anything. I always wonder why other people have a hard time understanding one another, when people's emotions radiate off of them like a strong smell. It is always easy for me to know what someone is feeling.

"You had a kind of seizure," Inara said. Her words were slow and plodding, turned over in her mouth for inspection before being set free. "You fell to the ground and clutched at your nose and ears. Then you looked at your hands and screamed. Simon tried to reach you but you couldn't seem to hear anyone. When Mal and Jayne tried to get you to stop moving you began to thrash and punched Jayne."

She said this all very calmly, her fingers working through my hair.

"You know, we might want to cut this a little. It will be easier to deal with out here if it's shorter," Inara said, inspecting my hair.

I always had my hair long. I like it that way.

"No?" Inara asked.

I shook my head.

"Okay,  _mei mei_. We'll leave it long." Inara started braiding my hair.

"I'm sorry," I told her. I'm not sorry for punching Jayne but I am sorry for making everyone scared. Especially Simon.

"It's not your fault, River. We only apologize if something is our fault," Inara told me.

"But I scared them."

"River." Inara turned me around so that we could look at each other. Inara has beautiful eyes. "You can't control these things anymore than Jayne can be sophisticated or Kaylee can be cruel. It's a part of who you are now. You can either be sorry for it, or you can accept that and move forward."

I nodded. This is who I am now. I do not like it, but I must handle it.

Inara smiled at me. "You're a good girl, River."

When we first meet people, we put them in a box. The Joker. The Soldier. The Girly-Girl. The Snob. The Crazy One. The Earnest Priest. But then we get to know them and they start to stretch out the box, bend it and warp it until finally they break free, their own unique person, imprinted upon our memories forever. They have their own quirks and flaws and imperfections, their trials and scars and traumas. They have their fears and their hopes and their strengths, their loves and their losses and their dreams. Physical ticks that they can't help, like when Kaylee's eyes get wide or Jayne touches or smells something to get a feel for it. Little changes in their demeanor, like when Mal's jaw and eyes harden, or when Inara draws herself up, or when Zoe's calm becomes deadly.

When we let them break out of those boxes, and we accept every piece of them--even the pieces that we don't like or don't understand--and we care for them despite anything and everything… then we are family. Then we are a crew.

And no power in the 'Verse can stop us.

I think in that moment, I broke out of my box a little for Inara. I wasn't crazy, and I wasn't the second Samantha, and I wasn't a version of Inara. I was River. And she loved me for me. And I think she realized that Mal had been out of his box for a while, and so had everyone else, and it was too late to avoid getting a family because she already had one. And she was damned if she left us and damned if she didn't, so she might as well stay.

I think the last bit of Companion left Inara then.

I think this because when she hugged me, she cried and cried and cried for a long time.

* * *

When I felt better, I told Inara what I saw and felt. Inara took Simon and Mal down to the infirmary and she told them.

"Sounds like somethin' the Blue Sun would come up with," Mal's voice did that thing where it's almost a growl but not quite.

Blue Sun is a corporation. They set up some kind of mining operation on Shadow after it was destroyed. They're getting rich off of people's deaths.

"Did she say how she felt this? Did she see anyone else?" Simon always has to know every detail.

"No. She said that she felt all of this, but that was it."

"You don't think…"

"That she was reliving someone's last moments?" Mal finished. "I think she just might have."

"What could possibly have caused something like that?" Inara asked.

"From what you've told me, her symptoms appear to be similar to the Ebola virus," Simon said. "Victims bleed profusely from every orifice, and sometimes the blood will build up under the skin and cause it to slough off. Excreting intestines, vomiting, and brain damage are also the virus's typical modus operandi."

"Oh God."

"Blue Sun supplies food to the Rim," Mal said. "But they're in deep with the Alliance. Make weapons and offer security to the rich… create real nasty stuff, like bio-weapons and such. Got to see some of their work during the war."

"They're not related to the Hands of Blue at all, are they?" Simon asked.

"Possible. Close enough name, and they're similar in methods."

"I heard once of entire towns where people were killed peacefully--there was a chemical dispersed in the air that just made them all fall asleep and never wake up."

I could feel the jump in Mal's thoughts. "Where'd you hear about this?"

Inara thought. "I don't know. It was just rumors in the temple. Why?"

_Haymer's Alliance. Bio-weapons expert during the war. He'd target neighborhoods with valuables, wipe out every living soul without ever damaging the goods. Go in, take whatever he wanted._

Saffron said that to Mal.

Pieces. Pieces falling into place. Click. Click. Click.

When we catch up to Saffron, I am slapping both sides of her face.


	8. Chapter 8

_I don't know how I got here, but I crouch among the crates and boxes anyway. The screams echo off the walls and the metal bounces it around, makes it difficult to tell where the screams originate. Chains hang from the ceiling, clanking together menacingly. There's a foul stench in the air, so thick that I can taste it on my tongue. Something sizzles and burns--it smells similar to chicken, but not quite._

_Someone has to get my message. Someone has to know what happened here. I know that it was recording; I know that it was preserved. I can only hope the beacon is strong enough to attract attention._

_My legs are still too tender and wobbly to walk properly, and my back stings. I can feel blood soaking into my shirt, trickling down my back. If they catch me again, I think, just remember your name. Hold onto that, onto your identity, and you'll be fine._

_A few of my former colleagues are among them now, their minds gone and replaced with a viciousness that is stark and deep and scarier than any monster under the bed because they were once human. I worked with them every day, ate lunch in the same room, passed them in the hallway…_

_Breathe. Deep breaths, Caron._

_I have to get out. I have to get out. I can't become one of them, I can't. And I won't die. Dear God, I don't want to die like this…_

_A squeaking noise comes from my feet. Rats. I ignore them, placing my palms on the floor to stabilize myself and keep from vomiting. There are brown stains on the metal floor, thick, crusted stains, and I know that they didn't start out that color._

_One of the rats--dark gray, matted fur, long teeth--jumps onto my left wrist. It latches on, teeth going in deeper than I thought, wasting no time in chewing on my flesh._

_I bite my lip. I can't scream. I can't. They'll find me. Out of the corner of my eye I see a woman (Victoria, her name is Victoria, but I don't know how I know that) being hoisted up on one of the chains by her bound wrists. Her blond hair falls in front of her face but I know that she is crying. There is blood seeping out of her underwear and down the inside of her legs, and her breasts aren't there anymore, it's just raw flesh that bubbles and bleeds. The rat keeps chewing on my wrist, biting in deeper, and I feel him hit bone and there's blood seeping out but I still don't make a sound. This pain is nothing compared to what they'll do to me if they find me. I try to shake him off, shaking my wrist violently, but all that I get is more pain and one pissed-off rat._

_There's a sound behind me. I turn and I see something wearing patchwork clothing that stinks worse than anything. I say 'thing', because that face is not human. It has metal sticking out of it, gashes and cuts, some that are haphazardly sewn up and some that aren't and lie gaping, flies crawling along the flesh. Their teeth are brown and yellow, half of them gone, the gums red and swollen. Their hair is matted and filthy, their eyes glowing almost red with feral hunger and rage, so much rage. It--man or woman, I cannot tell--smiles at me._

_I feel a new pain settle in me that has nothing to do with the rat, whose teeth are now scraping along bone._

_The thing, person, monster, reaches for me. As their hand closes over my arm, it all goes black._

* * *

Breathing. Heavy breathing. And crying--somebody is crying. Who is that? They are whimpering and crying like someone just died in front of them.

"River?"

It's me.

I'm the one crying.

Simon sits down on the side of my bed, and I hug him. "What happened?" He asked.

It's fading, fading quickly like wisps of smoke, and I can't see anything through the haze. "Rats," I say. That's all I can remember. Rats and a metal room, and a terrible smell. I hold up my left wrist. I can still feel the tiny teeth tearing in, the pain and the spurt of warm blood. I clutch at it, hold it to me, rubbing the unbroken skin.

"It was just a dream, River," Simon assures me. I let him hug me, resting my head on his shoulder. "It's just a dream. Nothing can hurt you, not anymore."

But it wasn't a dream. Dreams belong to the person who has them. That belonged to someone else. That was a memory, a memory that floated away and found its way to me somehow.

I wish I could remember more of it.

But at the same time, I know that if I remembered more, I'd probably still be crying. And, maybe, throwing up.

Once, I threw up into Simon's lap.

Jayne laughed but Simon was far from amused.

* * *

"Hey Kaylee, would you--what in the gorram–!?"

"Mal!"

"Oh, go-se."

"Simon, I swear by everything in the 'verse if you are doing what I think you're doing…"

"Captain, it was my idea. Leave him alone."

"Your idea--you know what, I don't want to know. I don't. I really… I gotta get this outta my head. You two go… go where I can't see you. For a day or two."

A door slams.

Mal walks into the room. I'm at the table writing in this journal. He takes one look at me and sighs.

"You heard all that?"

I nod. Kaylee screams real loud, and Mal's voice carries. I've never heard Simon curse before though.

"What were they doing?" I ask. Surely Mal is used to Simon and Kaylee by now.

Mal's eyes kind of bug out and his throat moves but nothing comes out. "Nothing… nothing you need to be thinkin' about, River."

I get a thought about knees and floor, but that's all. Why won't people just tell me these things? I'm not a child!

Well, I won't be in eight months, three weeks and two days. Personally, I think that we should become adults at sixteen, but the Alliance did not listen when I sent them petitions before I went to the Academy.

"What are you writing there?" Mal asks. He's trying to distract himself, but I can tell he really wants to know.

"It's my journal. Simon makes me write in it. He got the idea from Shepherd Book. He thinks that it will help me to keep my thoughts in order."

"And is it working?"

I look down at this journal. "No," I declare. But at least it will be fun to read all of this years from now. Well, maybe fun is an overstatement.

"And here I thought you were writing poetry or something," Mal chuckles.

"I have no interest in making stuff up. My life does not need embellishing." I pause. "Unlike Jayne's letters home."

Mal chuckles again. "Hold on." He goes to his bunk and comes back with a worn leather book a little bigger than mine. "Write a bit myself. Nothing to be real proud of but…" He shrugs. "It can keep you from going crazy sometimes."

"I'm already crazy," I tell him. "Perhaps I should have taken up writing sooner."

It takes Mal a minute to realize that I'm joking. When he does, he smiles at me like he's proud.

"Here." He hands me the book. "You can take a look, if you want. Like I said it ain't much, but there's somethin' to knowing it sprung from your own mind."

I open the book to a random page and read the poem. It's unfinished, the beginning of a song that died in his throat before the melody was complete, but it's still nice.

_There's a light on in my head_

_But nobody's there so just leave a message_

_I'm gone for the weekend_

_Maybe to stay_

_Doesn't really matter_

_No one cares anyway._

"Wrote that right after I signed up. Original was on the wrapper of some protein bars," Mal explains. "Fell apart, but I remembered it and copied it down later."

I show him this. Not all of it--just the things I see in my dreams. I try to write them down but they are like Ice Planets, slipping out of my grasp as I reach for them. The tighter I hold, the thinner they become, like smooth water trickling through my fingers.

"That's quite a Wonderland you got in your head there," Mal says, chuckling.

Mal is trying to think up a nickname for me. Zoe is Zoe, and always will be, but Hobern is Wash and Kaylee is  _mei mei_  and Inara is 'nara, and I must have a nickname too.

Jayne is Jayne, 'cause calling him by a girl's name is good enough for anyone.

Mal will think up a nickname for me. I know what it is, but I won't tell him. He has to figure it out on his own.

"This isn't poetry," I remind him. This was my head.

"Guy once wrote a poem. Took opium and tried to describe what it felt like," Mal says. "Called Underground River, or somethin' like that."

"I am not on drugs." Not anymore.

"Not sayin' you are." Mal pushes my book back so it is in my hands. "Mighty nice of you to share."

I shrug. "You shared first. Only fair." That's another thing that Shepherd Book is big on. He said that life isn't fair, so humans have to be to make up for it.

There is something wrong with that philosophy, but I haven't been able to properly examine it yet.

"This one is the best." I point at a page. Burning lands and boiled seas… I wonder if Mal saw what happened to his home, or if he just learned about it. I do not remember, but I'm sure the Alliance broadcast the war. The Alliance is big on television.

I do not like it.

Mal looks a little uncomfortable, and I wonder if I wasn't supposed to see that one. Then I spy another poem, and I smile.

"You should leave this where someone can see it," I tell him.

He looks at me, and there is that look in his eyes, the one Inara thinks is roguishly handsome. Her words.

"Think Wash's chair is a good enough place?" He asks.

I nod. "Perfect," I tell him seriously.

I haven't seen Zoe in such a state since Mal and Wash were captured.

* * *

Wash figured out it was Mal and got back at him. Now Kaylee and Zoe are planning something to get Simon with, and Mal and Wash are even now so they're going to get Jayne.

I am waiting until everyone is exhausted so I can strike when their defenses are down.

I am rather devious, aren't I?

Instead I am thinking.

We are more than crew now. We're starting to become family. Even Jayne.

I wonder about Jayne. He is very stupid but not always, and he can be thoughtless, but not always. He writes letters to his mother that make him sound like Mal instead of himself, because he wants to be a big damn hero, and he knows deep down that he isn't.

I think that somewhere deep inside there's a little boy. A little boy that believes in God and carries a big gun so the bullies won't get him, who wants to get rich and loves his mother and thinks Inara is pretty. And I see that little boy hiding behind what he thinks adulthood is, and I wonder what went wrong along the way.

Sometimes I don't think we're so different, Jayne and I. Stuff went wrong with me along the way.

We are becoming a family now. First I had my mother and father and Simon, and then it was just Simon and I realized that my parents didn't love me enough to get over their fear of the Alliance or their love of their lifestyle. But now I am with people… people that make their own lifestyle and have no love for the Alliance, people that make a home for you in their hearts even if they shouldn't.

When I meditate, I can feel each life in the ship, like a warm flower blossoming in my mind. This time when I do it, I feel nine lives around me instead of eight, the last a tiny, fragile thing, a flower within a flower.

Zoe is pregnant.

And I can feel how fragile each life is, and how easily the candle can be snuffed out, and I remember what we are going to do.

I just got this family.

I don't want to lose them, too.

* * *

Mal and Inara are going together.

Doesn't everybody know it's stupid to light a fire in a gas station?

I decided to hide in the shuttle and come with them because there will be trouble. It's very cramped where I'm hiding right now, curled up in the tiny engine room. It's on the warm side in here but the sound of the engine thrumming is soothing.

"You ready?"

Mal looks at Inara like she's going to break.

"Yes."

"We'll set off, then."

They're nervous, unsure of how to act, being extra polite.

"Actually, you might want to check the engine; it was a little slow to start up last time."

Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no…

"'Nara…"

Say something, Mal. Say something, anything, say that you think she's perfect and amazing and all that crap about how you're not worthy and please please please don't come into the engine room…

"Why didn't you mention this to Kaylee?"

Mal, you stinking cowardly self-deprecating piece of go-se!

"River!"

" _Mei mei_?"

"What the hell are you doing in here?"

I am in trouble now.


	9. Chapter 9

It is a strange thing, to be seventeen. Seven--the fourth prime number. The number of magic. Seven is the only dimension besides three (also a magic number) in which a vector cross product can be defined. The lowest dimension of the known exotic sphere. The golden mean in music. A seven-sided shape is a heptagon.

Seven is very important in religion. Seven days of creation. Seven years of famine, seven years of plenty. Vengeance and punishment delivered sevenfold, but forgiveness is given seventy times seven times. Seven sins and seven virtues. Seven strands on the lamp for the candles, one for each night the oil burned. Seven layers of earth and sky, seven layers of hell and heaven. Seven demons and seven angels, seven forms of magic, seven disciples, seven promises. Magic Seven. Golden Mean. Plus or minus two?

I must be careful. I became obsessed with the number five once and scared Simon an awful lot. Numbers are so beautiful. They do not lie or hurt you or slip around like serpents, hiding in the grass so soft and beautiful. You lie there, gaze up at the stars, try to count them, try to see the shapes of the clouds and the shapes of the stars, the shapes of the dark in between… try to see… but the snake bites and your head tilts and the world isn't safe anymore.

Numbers do not do that.

Shepherd Book says that the Bible is how we understand God, but men wrote the Bible. It holds numbers, and numbers are truth, but men do not see truth or they do not understand it, or they twist it to suit them. Book reads God in the Bible. I read God in the numbers. Numbers make up the table I write on, the pen I write with, spirals and triangles and hexagons, fitting together and creating the universe. Order out of chaos.

Ten--beyond the threshold of nine, the addition of single units; a number that cannot stand alone but exists only because of those before it. Ten is the basis for the decimal numeral system, for factors and divisors. Roman numeral for ten is X. X marks the spot.

I am not a child, but I cannot be an adult. I wonder if I ever could be. I might have been, once, but I do not know now. What makes someone an adult?

Not being seventeen, apparently, because I am stuck on the shuttle while Inara delivers the letter. Mal was most insistent upon it.

"What in the 'verse are you doing here, River?" Mal was confused but mostly annoyed. He wasn't scared for me, which was good. I've only seen Mal scared once, when Inara fell after the Reavers nearly got us, and I don't want to see him scared like that again. Mal isn't allowed to be scared. I am scared enough for the both of us.

Mal didn't know what I knew. I would feel bad about keeping it from him but I keep a lot of secrets from a lot of people. I keep secrets from Simon and secrets from Wash. I keep other people's secrets for them. But other people have no secrets from me. There is nothing that I do not know or cannot find out. The puzzle is in knowing how to figure out what I know. My mind is not numbers or equations. It is riddles and mazes, twisting and turning, shades and ghosts and halls of mirrors.

Am I getting off track again? I don't know. The track wavers, looping around itself, uneven, rough, and turning corners too sharply but it always goes on. What track am I on? Where am I going?

The shuttle. I was left on the shuttle.

"You're staying here," Mal insisted. "I don't know what idea got into that crazy head of yours, but this is a mighty nice area of the planet; liable to be crawling with Alliance police. I don't much like the idea of having to explain to that brother of yours that I got you arrested."

"It wouldn't be your fault if I was arrested," I reminded him.

"Try telling that to your brother," Mal argued.

He had a point. Simon and Mal are not yet the best friends they will become. That will take a few years. Hopefully someone will not have to die to get it to happen.

I wanted to explain that I was an adult. I could take care of myself and I was here to help and don't they know that there is trouble ahead? I can smell it in my mind, like a fog that clouds the eyes inside my head, visions blurring… surely they need me?

But I am not an adult. I am not a child, but I am not an adult. I don't feel like an adult. I feel small and young and like a puff of wind could blow me away into the black and the scary things that wait on the other side.

The track is twisting again.

"You can't go either," I reminded him.

"He's not," Inara stated firmly. "He's staying in the shuttle with you while I make the transaction."

Mal didn't like the idea of Inara going on her own. His jaw didn't clench. It simply… solidified. Like water becoming ice, hard and immovable. It looked like a more solid matter, the atoms packed in tight together, numbering in the thousands, than the shuttle and Inara standing next to him. Inara looks like a goddess, but goddesses aren't real. They vanish like dreams before the morning or dew before a sun, and sometimes I wonder if Inara will vanish, too.

Mal wonders the same thing.

* * *

It starts out as an itch.

It always starts differently. Sometimes, it's a huge wave crashing over me. Other times I feel like a tiny box has been opened, very quietly, the knowledge inside small and quiet. Once, it was a pricking behind my eyes, hot and harsh and thin as a needle. This time, it was an itch. Tingles in the ends of my nerves, just under the skin, bugs crawling just beneath the surface where I can't get them. It distracts me. I start to ramble. I tried writing about what happened before but then I spoke of numbers and now it's all a jumble in my head. The buzzing is distracting me. Why won't this itch go away?

Scratch and scratch, wondering if I should tear at the skin, rip it off, dig into the juicy muscle. Track down the bugs, get rid of the itch… the itch in my blood, buzzing and humming, each cell floating among others, solid and not solid all at once… what am I made of…

"River? You okay there?" Mal comes over to me.

The voices in my head are back. Why do they scream? No, no screaming. Screams are fading… silence blankets, smothers, hides… must dig deep, peel back the skin, crack open the bones and suck out the marrow. Find the meaning, find the soft truth in the hard silence--crack, crack, crack--open the bones and find the truth. Dead men tell tales, but only speak in silence. Rewind the cortex, follow the stream of time, find the beginning of the screams. What caused the screams…

Why do you scream, little bird? Fly away, away into the sun… fly with the sun at your back, so your enemies are blinded. Blind them… sun is yellow, sky is blue… I learned that when I was little. Learn your colors, little River. Rivers are blue. Skies are blue.

Suns are blue…

The truth that came so easily when I did not need it hides from me when I would give it life. Mal, Mal, we have to get to her. Mal, Mal, it's me they want. Mal, Mal, bad, bad…

"River? Look at me. Hey,  _qīn'ài de háizi_ , it's okay. What's wrong?"

What  _is_  wrong?

I am on the floor instead of Inara's cushions, clutching at my head. My arms are covered with red scratches from my nails. Mal holds my wrists, lowers them slowly. I taste salt. Am I crying?

No time for tears. Dry them up.

"He started it," I can only whisper. Whispers in the dark corners of my mind, a hollow wind down the corridors within. Follow the ghosts. Retrace the screams. Whispers are for secrets. The darker the secret, the harder to speak. "He started it… created them, created  _me_ … she's tricked us. The Harlequin dances, turn on the tabletop… dance, Columbine, dance… played us for a penny show. She saw me, they want me, he started it…"

"River, you're makin' ten kinds of no sense right now. You sayin' Inara's in trouble?" Mal searches my eyes. Brown into blue, mud and water, the river churning…

"Saffron sees…" Why can't I make sense? Why won't the words come? "Inara never kissed her," I blurt out. "Saffron didn't fool Inara. You can't play a player."

I can't name the emotions swirling in those eyes. Water stirs the riverbed, sending the mud downstream…

"Saffron knows. Saw me. She's cunning, she's married to him, she knows… They want me, they want to bait the rats… the roach checks in but never checks out…"

"They're after you," Mal nods. "And they'll use Inara to get to me to get to you?"

I nod. The words stick in my throat like peanut butter.

I can't remember the last time I had peanut butter. It was before the Academy, but I don't know exactly when. I used to eat it off a spoon. Mother said it wasn't proper but Simon laughed.

"Right." Mal stands, strapping on his guns. "If you're what they want, then you're stayin' put. I ain't letting a two-faced snake steal any of my crew."

I do not put up a protest because I am too happy to argue.

Mal said that I was  _crew_.

That's as good as saying I'm family.

* * *

"You're sure about this, sir?"

"I hate to argue, Mal, but Madame Psychic isn't known for being particularly clear about things," Wash cut in.

"I'm certain, Zoe. Wash, you just fly her sure. And someone remind Jayne that I'm captain, so if he tries anything I will serve him his balls in won-ton."

"Will do, sir."

"Stay frosty." Mal cut out the transmission. "You keep the shuttle ready to go,  _bao bei_. We'll be back 'fore you can figure out the solution to pi."

"It's 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067..."

"Okay, okay. Just stay here."

"But I have two hundred and thirteen more digits to recite!"

Mal is getting better at knowing when I'm joking.

* * *

When I lived in the Core, we had access to lots of shows on the Cortex. One of the most popular genres (I like that word, it sounds fancy) was mystery. Detectives, authors, meddling kids… they all solve crimes in different ways. I did not like them, but Simon enjoyed them.

First of all, they were all annoyingly easy to figure out. Each show follows a set formula. Deduce the formula and you have an equation that you can reliably apply to each situation. It's like math, or a law of nature.

Secondly, fifty-six percent of them employed a most irritating habit of giving a character a speech that breaks down the motive, method, and means of the killer. Surely the audience should be expected to be clever enough to put together the pieces without a nonsensical monologue?

Simon tells me this is why I should not go into theater.

Unfortunately, I am now forced to employ such a method. I do not know how else to write down the events or the reasons behind Saffron's actions or explain the planning.

Knowledge comes to me in different ways. Sometimes I touch an object and I see when it was last used and how. I get memories when I sleep. I don't always know that I know something; it slips in through the back door, hiding among the cabinets and chests and boxes of my memory, slinking through my brain. Sometimes it's like a movie, but the frames don't match and someone cut the film early so I can't see the ending. Parts are warped like melted plastic, or scattered on the cutting room floor and I have to put the pieces back together while single frames play over and over.

Nobody knows how the Blue Sun started. I don't know. Or maybe I do but I don't know that I know yet. Haymer came from a good family in the Core. I know that. He was the second son. No, the third son. But one son died, so only two were left. He was good at chemistry.

I used to love chemistry, but then they used it to hurt me. I don't like it so much anymore. But he loved it. He wanted to create behavioral drugs to combat depression.

Depression is why there are only two sons now.

It's blank between the home chemistry set for Christmas and the first strain of the Pax.

_It wasn't my intention to kill, just put them to sleep. But the government went rampant with it._

Did Durran create the Blue Sun, or did the Blue Sun create Durran? Which came first, the Pax or the organization?

He retired, after the war, but the Blue Sun still burns. Athens sends their children to Minos, the Districts give their tributes to the Capitol, and Germany pays the tribes of Israel. Le Marque is dead, yet the people rise.

Then the record skips again. It's tied to the Academy, but it gets jumbled up with my own memories of the Academy and I can't quite straighten the tower. The puzzle pieces are mixed.

The music plays, and Saffron is here now. One if by land, two if by sea. Light the candle, leave the light on, the prodigal wife returns home. She specifically targeted Haymer at that dance. She was contacted, told to get information. When I try to figure out what information I am bombarded and drowning in random equations and chemical solutions and it will take me weeks to sort it all out so I am ignoring it for now. I will write it all down later, in the back of this book, separate from my personal accounts. One must be organized about these things.

I'd ask Mal if I could try some of the solutions, but I think he'd be too worried about my blowing up  _Serenity_.

The point that I am trying to make--the tip of the shaft, the point of the spear--that's what she said… and now Jayne has most certainly poisoned my mind… is that Saffron knew about the Academy. Knew about the children. She must have heard or seen something when she was with us, and kept it like an heirloom in her chest. Some people collect stamps or old guns. Saffron collects identities and secrets.

She wants to make it up to him. She wants to show she loves him.

She wants to pull another con.

I wonder, is this Saffron's only way to show her love? Or is it the only way she'll accept? Do other paths scare her too much?

Or is this the only path she can see?

I am a product of his work. Perhaps she thinks he'll want to examine me, or take me back to the Academy. I don't know. So many things I don't know, so many things that I do, all blurry like a foggy windowpane. Rain smears the glass… clear and cold, pure and cool, and yet it hides things, distorts things. Even angels can disorient you. Even the clearest truth can warp your mind.

Mal is gone.

I will follow.

* * *

Sneaking through the house--luxurious Earth-That-Was style mansion--posed little difficulty. The number of household staff was minimal and they were nonexistent in Haymer's private chambers. Trash chutes make excellent hidey-holes as long as you take care not to slide down the chute.

Ceilings are also surprisingly easy to utilize as a method of transportation.

I wonder if I was this flexible and balanced and all before the Academy. Simon says that I loved to dance, but I don't know if that's the same thing. I couldn't kill a man the way I killed those Reavers, though. That I know.

I think my mother would have said something if I had killed a dinner guest.

Mal walked right into the trap. He's not that stupid--he knew it. He knew when he left the shuttle he'd be walking into the muzzle of a gun. But I think Mal would walk into any trap if Inara's there as well.

Inara still doesn't know what's going on. She suspects, but she's a mite confused because nobody is explaining the exact plan to her. I can feel her brain whir as she tries to work it out, like a paint-by-numbers kit but with no numbers, just colors and the canvas, trying to find the picture in the strange shapes and outlines.

They're all talking. Probably saying something witty. They are all gifted in the art of barbs. Mal and Inara will stop to argue at some point. Saffron has most likely dropped a bomb or two, and an innuendo. I can't read Haymer. Does he want me? Am I the cattle led to slaughter? Or does he want that all behind him? Does he want nothing to do with me? I pray it is the latter, but I am too scared about the former to brave the room.

Given my conflictions, sinking to the floor and sitting against the wall outside the room seems like the best option. My knees come up to touch my chin and my arms wrap around my legs. The fetal position, named for the arrangement of the fetus in the womb. Adopted as a subconscious method of calming one's nerves or promoting a feeling of safety and comfort.

Nothing in the 'Verse can offer me comfort anymore. They stripped that from me. Promises are hollow, hugs are only temporary, and the stars are black and cold. Worlds cannot hold, and the void waits, hungry.

I am not hiding. I am not flinging myself into the black. I am not shrinking away, and I am not going to fall. I press my back into the unyielding stone and focus on my breathing. Sometimes at the Academy, the only thing I could do was breathe. In and out, one and two, don't think, don't think, or you'll slip away forever.

We were required to do interviews and keep diaries on a standard-issue PAD at the Academy. I just now remembered that. I wonder what else I've forgotten or am scared to recall. I wish I could read what I wrote then.

Then again, it is probably wise if I do not.

Breathing helps. I have to do something. Voices are rising, swelling like the ocean.

I can't go in there. Too many variables.

But if I stay here, my crew is lost. I've seen what we could become together. I've seen how our roots and branches could interlock and intertwine, a forest of individual plants that grow as one.

I remember glimpses, memories and how they come to me. Sometimes, they come to me in the moment. I see through the person's eyes, and I am them for a moment.

Could I do it again?

Reaching out… I am reaching… I might fall, I am on the edge, tipping--I must be balanced. Dance, little seamstress. On toe, extend, feel the pulse of color. Pure color, each soul a color, bright and clear and deep and true. Sense it and let it envelop me. Swathed in the color, the pulse of life, the breath of being. Muscle and tissue and bone, same as me yet not mine to own. Mine to borrow. Mine to use.

I look through Saffron's eyes.

I feel Saffron's heart beating, and her blood rushing, and her skin buzzing.

I let her senses take over me. I hear what she hears, and I see what she sees, and I smell what she smells, and I taste what she tastes, and I feel what she feels. I let her thoughts consume me, zooming along with mine until I am an observer in her brain, watching her thoughts as they whirl and hum like an overworked computer.

Her body is my body. Her mind is my mind.

She is mine.

I take her fingers, my fingers, our fingers, and I slowly lift our finger off the trigger of the gun. I lower our arm, and I bend our knees until we're crouching, and I lay the gun on the floor.

Everyone is stunned.

_You will not come out on top._

Saffron will not win this petty game.

Revenge is petty.

_It's okay. I like the bottom, too._

I ignore Saffron.

Mal figures it out first.

"River, I don't know what game you're playin' at, but that's a big keg of powder you're holdin'. Careful you don't let it slip." He is worried that I will lose control.

Don't worry, Mal. It's okay.

I hold our hands out, ready to be bound. "I'm sure you can find something to tie her up with." I speak in Saffron's voice, but it doesn't sound like Saffron. It's small and higher pitched, not at all sultry. Only Saffron would have a fake voice as well as everything else.

"Because handcuffs and duct tape are essentials in everyone's hall closet," Mal replies. Why must he be so difficult?

Saffron is fighting back. I can't hold her for long. Feel the atoms, the rush of blood and breath, the tug and pull of muscle. Focus on the body I'm in. Wear it like clothing. Own it like property. Believe it like religion.

"What's going on?" Haymer's watching us.

"Is that-- _mei mei_ , what are you doing?" Inara is scared for me.

"That's the girl? She's possessing Yolanda?" Haymer can hardly believe it. "She told me about her but I never thought…"

"You created a drug that made people just lie down and die." Mal considers spitting at his feet. "You think your successors wouldn't take things a step further?"

"Get her out. Get her out of Yolanda." Haymer is angry. He loves Saffron. This image does not match my knowledge. Which is true? The good man who loves his wife, or the man who paved the road to the Academy?

The gun. He has a gun.

"Durran, you fire that thing and I swear…"

This isn't how it's supposed to go!

"Put it down," I say. "Shoot her!" Comes out of my mouth right on the heels before I can stop it. Saffron is strong. I wrestle her down.

Inara doesn't move. If Durran shoots her, he will die. Mal will see to that.

"Put it down," I repeat. "Put it down, and I'll let her go."

"Who's speaking now? Yolanda or the girl?"

"Her name is River Tam," Inara speaks too calmly. "And I suggest that you speak to her with respect. Anything about her that you despise is a product of your company."

"It's not my fault! I gave it up to the Alliance, took my cut and retired. I didn't create this Academy, and I didn't create  _her_."

"Her name is River," Inara's words are smooth and sharp as steel. One turn of the blade and you cut your finger.

Haymer gestures.

Guns make such an odd sound. It's almost like a pop, but sharper and longer, like a tunnel instead of a hole. They don't snap or boom the way you would expect. It's a mite frightening, how quiet it is.

If Haymer had hit Inara, he would not be alive right now. But the gesture moved his hand to his right, and Mal moved to  _his_  right, and it hit Mal instead. Right in the shoulder where the Reaver weapons got him.

And Simon stitched those wounds up so nicely, too.

Mal staggers, and Inara catches him. Saffron claws up to the surface again, trying to swallow me. I choke her down. This is spiraling down, sliding down, down; down… we need to get out. We need to get out. We need to get to  _Serenity_.

I have to reach them. If I can enter someone's head, then I can send them a message, can't I?

I can't. I'll spread myself too thin. Stretching until I snap. I can't snap. You snap, you die. The Academy has no use for broken toys.  _There's a kind of grace to her._  Hide how thin the rubber's become. Don't think--breathe.

But I'm not in the Academy. If I don't get us out, I will be. They'll send me back, collect the reward. Stupid bounty. That's what they want, isn't it? Early or late, they all want me. I can't go back. I'll die if I go back. I'll make sure of it. Out, damn'd spot. But the signal might be too weak. The light is thin, and the darkness is thick and harsh. What if Saffron fights back while I try to reach them? What if no one hears.

Haymer points his gun at Inara. Warning her. Saying something. Inara's with Mal. Don't you touch her, Haymer. I'll make you bleed out of your ears.

I have no choice. I have to try.

Seven blossoms, tiny flowers of heat that flicker and float, lanterns in the darkness. One inside another, a paper lantern within a lantern, but the others stand alone. Simon, my brother… Kaylee, so sensitive… Wash, game for anything… Zoe, on her way to becoming a mother… Book, with his thoughts of God and the still small voice, for God was not in the earthquake or the tempest…

But none of them hear me. My voice is too faint or their minds are closed off. They cannot hear me. Perhaps Book thinks I am a temptation or God speaking in riddles. Maybe Simon fears he's going crazy. It doesn't matter why. Their ears are stopped.

One of them hears, though.

Wash is wrenched away from the controls and I hear  _Serenity_  give a groan of protest as she is spun, turned too quickly for her liking.

I feel Zoe's anger and then I am back inside myself, slipping into my skin like a comfortable pair of boots and I feel my bones sigh with relief.

 _Serenity_  lands in a way that would make Wash cry and Mal curse a blue streak, but it doesn't matter at the moment because it means they're here. We're getting out.

And this is the part that's a little crazy. (That sounds strange to say, as I am on the unbalanced side, but it was the word I liked best.)

Jayne was the pilot.

Jayne came for us. Out of all of the crew, Jayne Cobb heard me.

If Mal was in to fainting, I think he just might have done so.


	10. Chapter 10

"Gorram it, Doc, I said you can just leave it be!"

"If I don't attend to these stitches, they'll impede your ability to heal."

"So Mal's gotta get sewn up again? Ruttin' cool!"

"Just because you got us out does not mean I won't shoot you, Jayne."

"Wanna hold my hand, Cap'n?"

"Thanks, Kaylee, but I'm fine if--gor _ram_  it! Give a man some warning 'fore you stick him full of needles."

I ignored the circus and kept writing. Book peered at the words on the page. "What are you writing, child?" Shepherd Book has a voice like smooth pebble stones.

I am growing rather attached to allegories and similes.

"It's a fairy tale about a princess." I held up this journal so that he could see. "She was trapped in the tower by blue demons until her handsome prince rescued her. Only her handsome prince took his sweet time, so the demons got a lot of screaming out of her."

The Shepherd didn't look too comfortable about that, but he nodded and went to make sure Simon didn't break the Hippocratic oath.

Mal can make anybody mad if you give him an hour.

Let's see… is there anything I'm forgetting?

Inara got Mal's gun and shot Durran. Saffron's mighty pissed about that. It's funny--when people are angry, usually they run hot, but Inara ran cold; ice that burns.

"Come near my girl again and I will make half the men in the 'Verse widowers." Inara's eyes snapped like a whip cracking.

Ooh, that is a good description. I am getting better at this.

Inara kept the gun on Saffron while Jayne and Zoe loaded Mal onto the ship. I do hope no one makes the mistake of leaving those two alone, because they will surely kill each other, and then Mal will spiral into depression instead of just hovering on the edge of it, and I have enough trouble taking care of this crew as it is.

They need so much looking after.

"I'm sorry but if you move one more time I will put you under."

Everyone's been shooed out of the room by Inara. She's standing on one side while Simon works on the other, getting the bullet out of Mal. Her hand is resting mightily close to Mal's, but they aren't quite touching. Just… sharing space.

Silence reigns for three point eight seconds, but time is relative. Must look into that.

"Heard you protected River in there." Simon's words are stiff, starched and pressed before he slips them on. This is not easy. "She would've been taken. Sent back… I…"

I am daring to hope. This is more exciting than a fair! Or flying elephants!

"Just stitch me up proper, Tam, and we'll call it even."

"Will do."

"…She ain't too bad, you know. Not as bad as you think." Mal tries to nod, but it doesn't quite work out while he's stretched out like that. "Saved us, more'n we saved her."

"Well, thank you anyway."

Mal is like a wounded animal. Slink back to the cave, lick your wounds, don't let anyone see. Pain is earned. Wounds are deserved. Take care of yourself. He won't acknowledge it, but he thinks he deserves the pain, just a little. The blotted part of his soul thinks so. But fussing? That ain't right. Just slap on a bandage and get back in the fields, boy.

But he lies there, and doesn't complain for the rest of the time it takes for Simon to sew him up. And when they look at each other, their eyes aren't as hard. And while it might not seem much to Simon,  _Tam_  is better than  _Doc_.

Baby steps, I suppose. Battle is won, but not the war. We must soldier on. They'll get there. Hopefully before Kaylee loses patience.

* * *

Simon insisted on Mal staying the night in the infirmary, so that's why he's still lying there. Which is why Inara is still there talking with him, and why I am crouching at the top of the stairs trying not to write too loudly.

Mal has powerful strong hearing.

"Ever shot a man before?"

"No."

There are long pauses between each exchange, like they've spent all their courage and have to brew more.

"I'm s… it shouldn't have come to that. Shouldnt've gotten you involved in the first place."

"Would you put that in writing? I do believe this is the first time you've apologized to me."

"Well, first time you could hear it."

This is most cumbersome. I have to cease writing each time they stop talking lest they hear me. Book has started me on Shakespeare. It is bleeding into my vocabulary.

Who thought up the word 'lest', anyhow?

"That girl means a lot to you, don't she?"

"She's sweet. And lost. And, frankly, growing on me. Everyone here is."

For a moment I'm tempted to think Mal has stopped breathing, but then his breath lets out in a gust and he finds his words.

"You saying that y… that you're reconsidering?"

"I have reconsidered."

"I see."

"Do you?"

 _I ain't the one that turned tail to run._  Mal holds his tongue. Smart.

"You should rest."

Mal snatches her wrist so smoothly it looks slow. Inara could pull her hand away if she wanted with how loose and gentle he holds it.

"You ain't leavin' it at that, 'Nara. You always give me questions. Time I got an answer."

"What answer do you want?"

"River told me that you didn't kiss Saffron. So tell me this--how'd you get knocked out?"

It's the softest of touches, like a paintbrush on canvas or kiss of wind. There and gone, a smell you identify only after it's wafted past you. The lightest of kisses, not at all like the one she gave him when she found him in his bunk, thinking him dead. That was failure, a promise lost. This is a promise born.

"You have to rest."

She slips away and Mal lets her, because there will be more. More time, more kisses, more answers. More--

* * *

Forgive me for the sudden break in my writing. I had to scurry up the steps and dash into my bunk so that Inara would not catch me as she came up the stairs. I think she knows I was watching, though. But I will wait for her to say something in case I am merely being paranoid.

Philosophers debate the deepest questions, but it seems to me that the questions are simple ones. They only become complicated when you look at them too closely. What is life? Breathing, of course, your blood pumping, lungs working… consciousness. Is there a God? Well, somebody's out to get me.

What is happiness?

Happiness is watching two cats, haunches raised, circling and circling, sit down and eat a meal in the same room without snarling once. Happiness is knowing the boy is not entirely lost in the man. Happiness is seeing that a marriage is a journey, and the foot is raised for the next step. Happiness is playing tag through the bowels of a ship, screaming to hear your voice ricochet from one wall to another, bouncing as erratically as you breathe because you're laughing too hard. Happiness is the smile on the Shepherd's face because you listened to the hour lecture Sunday morning even though you wanted to fall asleep. Happiness is a glimmer in the darkness, the light from the bottom of the well.

Happiness is fluid. It changes, just as our beliefs and missions and dreams shift and transform throughout our lives. But right now, happiness is here. It is curled up in my chest, sitting with me in my bunk as I write these words. Happiness has eight names, and one extra that I do not yet know.

I must be sure to write to Saffron and thank her.

* * *

Inara is determined to make ladies out of Kaylee and me. Not companions, she insists. She says that if she catches us signing up for the Guild she will get Mal to tan our hides. She teaches us how to wash, and walk properly, and make polite conversation.

Kaylee loves it. I am more reluctant. But Inara is dying to so I play along. Who knows? I might have to pretend to be a lady or a companion on a job that we do. Inara says that we will find these skills useful, especially when we are married. Kaylee blushes and Inara winks and I tell her that I am never getting married.

Mal will not ask Inara to marry him.

Shepherd Book is annoyed but I don't think it matters.

Zoe's stomach is getting real big. Wash is always worried about her, checking that she's okay, and giving her pillows to sit on, and generally driving her crazy. Simon is checking on the baby and I check on her too.

It will be a girl. Simon says it's too early to tell but I know. Zoe likes it when I put my ear to her tummy and listen and I tell her what her daughter is thinking. It's our secret. She says I'm a baby whisperer.

I want to help deliver the baby. It was such fun to watch baby Jonas being born. I want to see it happen again.

Jayne is the same as ever.

Saffron will be back, causing trouble. I've seen it.

Kaylee and Simon have lots of sex in the engine room. I have not watched since the first time. I learned everything that I need to know. Now Simon buys her presents all of the time. He buys me presents too so that I don't feel left out.

I do not feel left out, but I don't say so because I like presents.

Shepherd Book is still not satisfied with himself, but he is content for now.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we are happy.

Of course, this means that something is going to happen. Maybe the gorram buffer panel will fall off of the ship for no gorram reason.

* * *

I was meditating. I'm getting very good at it, on focusing on nothing until I see everything. Usually it helps me to remember what is from the Academy and what is from before, what I used to know and what I never really knew but they tried to make me think I know. It helps to banish the voices in my head.

Today was different.

Perhaps it was because everything was peaceful now that we are finished with the Reavers and Durran and Saffron's games. I don't know. I saw so many things… things that have not happened. Images that floated in front of my mind, pictures that I could sense and feel rather than see.

A girl with caramel skin and chocolate eyes, asking Zoe about her father…

Shepherd Book begging Mal to believe in something…

A dark man with a light sword, killing people by making them kill themselves…

Mal in bed, holding Inara, but Inara is gone and it is only a shell…

A woman who is not a woman, speaking the words of a dead man…

Simon with a hand on Kaylee's rounded belly, looking happier than I have ever seen him…

My own face reflected in the glass of the cockpit as I sit with Mal, looking out into the black as we prepare to fly….

Mal's words echoing in my head…

_It ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. You know what the first rule of flying is? Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down; tell you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home._

And the whispers and hisses in my head seem to hear him, because they become louder and louder and merge into one word, one crying, wailing scream, and I know what they have been trying to tell me for so long. I don't know what it means, or what we have to do, but I know what they want me to hear.

I jumped up and raced into Simon's room. He and Kaylee weren't wearing any shirts and they didn't seem very prepared to receive any visitors but I couldn't wait. When I told them, they calmed down and understood why I was in such a hurry. They know how long I've waited to understand the whispers. So I told them what the whispers told me.

The whispers told me  _Miranda_.

**Author's Note:**

> I should also note that this story takes place post-television series but pre-film, so it's a bit of an AU take on what happens after "Objects in Space."


End file.
